Tougher than a Boiled Owl
Tougher than a boiled owl means extremely tough or hard to deal with - whether describing a person, meat, or situation. The idea is that an owl, if you ever tried to boil it, would be about the toughest thing imaginable.
'Tougher than a boiled owl' is another one I ain't never heard - only read it. 'Tougher than a boiled owl' is another one I ain't never heard - only read it. Pronunciation
/ˈtʌfər ðən ə bɔɪld aʊl/
Meaning & Usage
- Extremely tough or resilient
How’s that old truck still runnin’?It’s tougher than a boiled owl, that’s how.Origin
The phrase likely dates back to the **late 1800s**, when folksy humor and animal comparisons colored frontier talk across the American West.
"Boiled owl" was sometimes used in tall tales and cowboy banter - an image for something so **stringy, leathery, or impossible to chew** it became shorthand for toughness.
By the 20th century, it showed up in Southern and Ozark humor, blending into broader country speech.
Verdict: Southernish. Its rural flavor makes it sound perfectly Southern, but its roots are old American frontier slang.
Notes
- Used mostly humorously to praise toughness or complain about toughness (of meat, for example).
- Popular in cowboy, military, and rural storytelling traditions.
- Appears in early 1900s humor columns and American folklore collections.
- Still understood today, though mostly as an old-timey or joking expression.