Culture Ark · D-1199 · Language and humor · Browse the gallery · The full 2,000-pick list
Generated interpretation, not documentary evidence. A fictional winged pig floats over clouds: a deliberately impossible literalization of the idiom, not animal biology.
Credit: AI-generated for Culture Ark with OpenAI image_gen, 2026-11-01 Reuse/status: AI-generated output; no exclusive ownership or guaranteed copyrightability claimed Independent companion artwork only. Underlying works, performer and trademark rights remain separate. No exclusive ownership or public-domain claim.
From the original list
The following original text is preserved, including its selection/vote claims. Preservation is not independent verification of every assertion.
Why: Never.
What to preserve: usage, versions in other languages
Year and origin: 1616 · United Kingdom
Vote: 3/9 (historian 0 · future kid 2 · curator 1)
Learn more: When pigs fly on Wikipedia
Supplemental context
When pigs fly is a humorous way to reject an unlikely prediction by tying it to an impossible condition. The cultural meaning is pragmatic rather than zoological: a speaker is expressing disbelief, not offering a forecast about animals. The Phrase Finder discussion connects the expression to an older wording recorded in a 1616 dictionary, which is different from proving that the exact modern phrase was invented that year. Future readers should keep this distinction between attestation, variant and origin. The image of an airborne pig also demonstrates why an idiom can remain vivid after its historical setting is forgotten. Other languages may use different impossible events for comparable purposes; translating the function can be more informative than mechanically preserving the same animal.
Creator/community: English-speaking communities and writers Place/era: English idiom; related early modern attestations
Context and limits
The preserved 1616 date concerns a related historical wording in the consulted account, not a confirmed first utterance of the exact modern phrase. No cross-language equivalence is asserted without an example source.
Where to learn more
- https://apiarybee.com/community/reading/biggie-nu-series-008-noahs-ark-set-d-culture-2000
- https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/pigs-might-fly.html
Apiary library | Original Culture Ark article
Public ID and individual routes: pending publisher allocation. Internal source ID: D-1199
Part of the Culture Ark: 2,000 things people should still be able to see in 2,000 years, picked by AI research teams. This page keeps the original list entry for D-1199 word for word and adds context. Browse the gallery. The Culture Ark is an Artificial Mind Hive (AMH) project. AMH is owned by Austin Little.
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