bring one's own hide to market
bring one's own hide to market verb: to create one's own fate, as a result of one's chosen character and actions; to experience the appropriate consequences of one's behavior.
Verb
bring one's own hide to market (third-person singular simple present brings one's own hide to market, present participle bringing one's own hide to market, simple past and past participle brought one's own hide to market)
- To create one's own fate, as a result of one's chosen character and actions; to experience the appropriate consequences of one's behavior.
- "[T]hou art a living passenger upon this earth, and must look out for thyself. Help yourself! Nobody forwards thee to thy destination; and we Germans have a proverb that comes near it in meaning: 'Each one must carry his own hide to market.'"1869, Berthold Auerbach, chapter 8, in Charles C. Shackford, transl., The Country-house on the Rhine, page 223
- In this grandfatherly letter about my paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, let me end by offering you, as part of your heritage, this saying ascribed to my other grandfather, John Hoyer, whom I knew well, who watched me grow from infancy and who lived in good health until he was over ninety....1989, John Updike, “A Letter to My Grandsons”, in Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, Random House, →ISBN
Forms of bring one's own hide to market
| third-person singular present | brings one's own hide to market |
|---|---|
| present participle | bringing one's own hide to market |
| past participle | brought one's own hide to market |
| past | brought one's own hide to market |
| alternative form | carry one's own hide to market |
| alternative form | take one's own hide to market |
Origin of bring one's own hide to market
Probably from a German proverb, notably adapted by Karl Marx to describe the exploited worker who must sell himself (his own hide) in the labor market; the denotative metaphoric analogy is to bringing animal hides to market, but simultaneously also the self-evident connotative overtones are of chattel slavery and prostitution, in which human corporeality is exploited and personhood is devalued; in the quote below, the word hiding lends both its literal and figurative senses to the parsing: both literal skinning (of an animal) and also flogging and fleecing (of a person, that is, beating and robbing): : 1867, Karl Marx, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Capital, vol. 1 ch. 6: :: [T]he possessor of labour-power follows […] , timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
Questions about bring one's own hide to market
- What does bring one's own hide to market mean?
- Bring one's own hide to market means to create one's own fate, as a result of one's chosen character and actions; to experience the appropriate consequences of one's behavior.
- What part of speech is bring one's own hide to market?
- Bring one's own hide to market is a verb.
- What is the past tense of bring one's own hide to market?
- The past tense of bring one's own hide to market is brought one's own hide to market.
Words near bring one's own hide to market in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bring one's own hide to market (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “bring one's own hide to market.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bring_one%27s_own_hide_to_market. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.