[PW] question: legal expression, proverb

[Carolyn]

At 10:11 PM 4/2/2007, David Rash wrote:
>A faculty member is looking for the origin of a phrase which shows up in
>several legal cases: "gets the grease from the goose".  The context
>seems to indicate self generation or self incrimination but I could be
>wrong about this.  We have tried standard quote, proverb, slang
>dictionaries, Biblical concordance, concordance to Shakespeare, legal
>dictionaries, Dictionary of American Regional English, Idioms and
>Phrases Index, OED, Oxford Online databases, Historic NYT, etc. all to
>no avail. Please  Help!


My lawyerly nephew proposed this possibility:

Looking over the cases using the idiom, and doing some general 
research, I think I have deciphered the meaning of "gets the grease 
from the goose." Goose grease is a common-folk remedy for whatever 
ails you.* I think, in context from the cases, that the idiom refers 
to finding the remedy to a situation/legal question within the text 
of the relevant statutory law. For example, if a certain statute 
prescribes/proscribes certain actions for certain other reasons, then 
a court may be able to "read between the lines" and find the 
solution/remedy within the meaning and intent of statute. Thus, the 
idiom as I have understood it means to "get the remedy from the 
source itself." This is conjecture and I may be wrong. But that is my 
(un)professional opinion.

*See, e.g., 
<http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-2/dickens_what_in_the_dickens%20roast%20goose.htm>http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-2/dickens_what_in_the_dickens%20roast%20goose.htm.


Carolyn Haley
DocuMania
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