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when shrimps whistle

when shrimps whistle adverb: when pigs fly; never.

Adverb

when shrimps whistle

  1. When pigs fly; never.
    • You will catch her smiling at you, as Khruschchev used to say, when shrimps whistle. I call for a bowl of kasha and she brings it to the table. The cabbage soup is thickened with flour, a lump of meat swimming on the surface of the broth. Never mind the kasha, and I push it away. The babushka...2017 July 5, Francis R. Nicosia, The Three Romes: Moscow, Constantinople, and Rome, Routledge, →ISBN, page 64
    • These things will happen when shrimps whistle. Individuals and groups with divergent concepts of meaning and truth are likely to regard each other as prevaricators even when doing their respective best to be sincere.1965, Charles Burton Marshall, The Exercise of Sovereignty: Papers on Foreign Policy, page 110

Origin of when shrimps whistle

Calque of Russian когда рак (на горе) свистнет (kogda rak (na gore) svistnet, “when the crawfish whistles (on the mountain)”)

Questions about when shrimps whistle

What does when shrimps whistle mean?
When shrimps whistle means when pigs fly; never.
What part of speech is when shrimps whistle?
When shrimps whistle is an adverb.

Words near when shrimps whistle in the dictionary

  1. when one door shuts, another opens
  2. when opportunity knocks
  3. when pigs can fly
  4. when pigs fly
  5. when push comes to shove
  6. when shrimps whistle
  7. when the balloon goes up
  8. when the cat's away
  9. when the cat's away the mice play
  10. when the cat's away the mice will play
  11. when the chips are down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: when shrimps whistle (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.

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