When Pigs Fly Devil Is An Ass

The phrase "when pigs fly" rolls off the tongue so easily that most people never stop to ask where it came from. Not in this lifetime. It's the go-to response when your brother swears he'll finally clean the garage, or when a politician promises to lower taxes and balance the budget in the same breath. That's why we all know what it means: never. Not in any lifetime.

But then there's the other half of this strange pairing — "the devil is an ass." That one doesn't show up in casual conversation nearly as often. It sounds like something Shakespeare might have written, or maybe a line from an old folk ballad. Here's the thing — in fact, it's the title of a Jacobean comedy by Ben Jonson, first performed in 1616. The play is a satire, a mess of mistaken identities and demonic bureaucracy, and its title has echoed through literary history in ways most people don't realize.

So why put these two together? One dismisses a promise as impossible. Honestly, they don't share a common origin. Think about it: they're not from the same century, the same genre, or even the same register of English. But they do share something deeper: both are ways of talking about human folly, about the gap between what we claim and what we actually do. The other suggests that even evil can be ridiculous, incompetent, out of its depth.

This article isn't about a hidden connection between the two phrases. It's about what each one reveals — about language, about literature, and about the way we use humor to cope with the absurdity of being human.

What Is "When Pigs Fly"

The idiom "when pigs fly" (or "pigs might fly") is a classic adynaton* — a figure of speech so hyperbolic it becomes impossible. It belongs to a family of expressions found across cultures: "when hell freezes over," "when the cows come home," "on the twelfth of never." The image is deliberately ridiculous. Pigs are heavy, earthbound, distinctly non-aerodynamic. But the mental picture of a sow soaring through the clouds is meant to be funny and final. It shuts down the conversation.

But the phrase didn't always look like this. Plus, earlier versions in English used different animals. "Pigs fly" appears in print as early as the 1600s, but "pigs might fly" and "when pigs fly" didn't become the dominant form until the 18th and 19th centuries. Before that, you might hear "when pigs whistle" or "when pigs play the fiddle." The animal stayed the same; the impossible activity changed.

Why pigs? Now, probably because they were everywhere. In medieval and early modern England, pigs roamed village streets, rooted in middens, and were a constant, noisy, smelly presence in daily life. They were familiar, unglamorous, and decidedly grounded. Making them fly was a way of taking the most ordinary thing imaginable and flipping it into absurdity. But it adds up.

The phrase crossed the Atlantic early and thrived in American English. So did countless newspaper columnists, politicians, and frustrated parents. Mark Twain used a version of it. By the mid-20th century, it was fully entrenched — a piece of shared cultural furniture.

The Scottish Connection

There's a parallel Scottish expression: "pigs may fly, but they're unlikely birds." It's drier, more resigned. In real terms, the English version is a flat refusal; the Scottish version admits the theoretical possibility while dismissing the probability. That difference — absolute vs. probabilistic — tells you something about the temperaments behind the idioms.

Modern Usage

Today, "when pigs fly" shows up in advertising, memes, and the names of craft breweries and BBQ joints. It's lost some of its bite through overuse. People say it without picturing the pig. But the structure remains useful: a socially acceptable way to call bullshit without using the word.

What Is "The Devil Is an Ass"

Ben Jonson's The Devil Is an Ass* premiered at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1616, the same year Shakespeare died. It wasn't one of Jonson's biggest hits — Volpone* and The Alchemist* overshadow it — but it's one of his weirdest and most interesting plays.

The plot: a junior devil named Pug petitions Satan for a chance to corrupt souls in London. By the end, he begs to go back to Hell. Pug possesses a man named Wittipol, tries to figure out Jacobean society, and fails spectacularly. He's outwitted by humans at every turn — con men, jealous husbands, greedy merchants. The devil isn't terrifying; he's naive, bureaucratic, and easily scammed. Satan, skeptical but indulgent, sends him up. Earth is too corrupt even for a demon.

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The title is the thesis. The devil isn't a majestic fallen angel or a cunning tempter. He's an ass — a fool, a dupe, a creature of limited intelligence. Jonson takes the medieval image of Satan as the Prince of Darkness and deflates it. Evil isn't grand. It's petty, confused, and often outmatched by ordinary human greed.

Jonson's Satirical Target

Jonson wasn't attacking religion. Still, pug the devil is just the lens. Plus, he was attacking pretension*. The play mocks the new merchant class, the pseudoscientific alchemists, the would-be wits who quote Latin badly, the justice system that's easily bribed. The real devils are the humans who don't need possession to act badly.

This was bold stuff for 1616. The play flopped initially — audiences found it confusing, the plot too tangled, the satire too dense. But it survived in print, and later readers (including Dryden and Coleridge) recognized its odd brilliance.

The Phrase After Jonson

"The devil is an ass" entered English as a standalone phrase meaning "even the devil can be foolish" or "evil is often incompetent." It appears in later literature, sometimes as a direct quote, sometimes as a proverb-like observation. It never reached the ubiquity of "when pigs fly," but it carved out a niche in literary and philosophical discourse.

Why These Phrases Matter

You might ask: why devote an article to two unrelated expressions? Because they represent two different ways English handles the unsayable.

"When pigs fly" is a social* tool. Even so, it lets you reject a claim without confrontation. It's humor as boundary-setting. That's why "The devil is an ass" is a philosophical* tool. Plus, it reframes evil not as a cosmic force but as a kind of stupidity. It's humor as insight.

Both rely on bathos* — the sudden drop from the elevated to the ridiculous. The devil, ruler of Hell, reduced to a gull

who trips over his own pitchfork. A pig, earthbound and grunting, sprouting wings and learning to fly. Both images collapse grandeur into absurdity, and in that collapse, they give us something useful: a way to laugh at impossibility and to pity the pretensions of evil.

The Enduring Power of Deflation

What makes these phrases endure isn’t just their wit—it’s their honesty. They acknowledge that the world doesn’t operate on heroic or demonic principles alone. Here's the thing — grand plans fail. Evil stumbles. Think about it: wishes remain wishes. By laughing at the gap between ambition and reality, we inoculate ourselves against both despair and delusion.

Jonson’s devil returns to Hell not because he’s been defeated by divine force, but because he’s been outmaneuvered by human pettiness. That’s a darker and more unsettling insight than any tale of cosmic battle. It suggests that the real corruption doesn’t come from above or below—it comes from within, from the small betrayals and smaller ambitions that pass for normalcy.

Similarly, “when pigs fly” doesn’t just mock impossible dreams. It also gently chides us for clinging to fantasies that ignore the texture of everyday life. It reminds us to ground our expectations, to find humor in our limitations rather than rage.

A Language of Cynicism and Comfort

These phrases are more than wordplay. They’re survival tools wrapped in jokes. But in a world where certainty is rare and motives are often base, they offer a kind of intellectual modesty. They say: don’t take everything at face value, especially when it sounds too grand or too evil to be true.

And perhaps that’s their greatest gift. They teach us to laugh—not bitterly, but clearly—at the spectacle of human folly in all its forms. Whether it’s a devil in overalls or a pig in flight, the joke is always on us, and that self-awareness is the first step toward wisdom.

So the next time someone promises you the moon, or warns you of impending damnation, remember: even the most fearsome forces can be fools, and the most impossible dreams can be grounded in the simple truth of what pigs actually do.

In the end, both phrases do more than entertain. Consider this: they humble us. And in a language full of boasts and bluster, that may be the rarest magic of all.