A: “The proof is in the pudding” is actually a shortened version of a very old proverb, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It means that the real worth or success or effectiveness of something can only be determined by putting it to the test, appearances and promises aside – just as the best test of a pudding is to eat it.

Sometimes the saying is reduced even further to simply a noun phrase, “proof of the pudding” or “the proof in the pudding.” Then it is used to mean “confirmation” or “real test,” as in “the proof of the pudding is if no one gets hurt.” In fact, the shortened versions are used much more frequently nowadays than the long proverb with the “eating” phrase.

There are sources that say the maxim goes back in English to the 14th century. Though unsubstantiated, the claim is not without plausibility. But watch out! Back then no one was talking about the kind of sweet “pudding” confections we now get mostly from boxed mixes or pull-top snack cans or cafeteria counters.

Fourteenth century puddings were gutsy! What they were, essentially, were sausages – mixtures of meat, cereal, spices, and often blood, stuffed into intestines or stomach, and boiled.

If you’re wondering “why pudding?” it’s useful to know that puddings were held in much higher esteem at one time, so much so that there was another old saying that went, in part, “if a woman knows how to make a pudding, … she knows enough for a wife.” Husbands back then expected at least one pudding a day on the table. Even the eminent 18th-century literary figure Samuel Johnson saw fit to commend his friend, the poet and translator Elizabeth Carter, thus – “(she) could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from Greek …” Add to that the concealed nature of pudding ingredients – whether in a blood pudding or one of the traditional sweet puddings full of dried fruit and nuts and enclosed in a dumpling crust – and the logic behind the expression becomes far less mysterious.

Whatever its actual origins, we find the expression in print since the 17th century. We have examples of its use by the English historian William Camden, by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Hamilton, and by Joseph Addison in his Spectator magazine, and it still remains popular today, in one or another of its versions.

This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Readers may send questions to Merriam-Webster’s Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.

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