Why do we say "Bring home the bacon"?

Meaning:

“Bring home the bacon” means to earn a living; provide for one’s family.

Background:

Many scholars believe that the genesis of this idiom dates back to 1104 CE. Legend has it that the wealthy Lord Fitzwalter and his wife dressed as humbly as possible and presented themselves to the Augustinian Priory of Little Dunmow in Essex, England, requesting a blessing for their marriage. The Prior, impressed with their devotion, gave them a flitch (side) of bacon. Fitzwalter revealed his true identity at that point and gave the priory land on the condition that a flitch of bacon be given to any couple who could prove they were similarly devoted.

Over time this evolved into an extremely popular and well-attended event known as the Dunmow Flitch Trials. Couples applying for the flitch were to appear before a judge and jury (comprised of six maidens and six unmarried men) and present their case, with contestants seeking to convince the panel that they hadn’t quarreled with their spouse “in a year and a day.”

The Trials are mentioned in The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, a 1362 poem by William Langland (“Though they go/to Dunmow/they never fetch/the Flitch.”). Geoffrey Chaucer also references it in The Canterbury Tales' “The Wife of Bath's Tale” (1395):

But never for us the flitch of bacon though,
That some may win in Essex at Dunmow.

Event winners have been recorded since 1445, and the Trials are still carried out every four years (on leap years) in Great Dunmow. (A same-sex couple won the award for the first time in 2024.)

Now, as to how the idiom “bring home the bacon” evolved from this beginning, it seems to have come from the US boxing scene at the turn of the 20th century. On September 3, 1906, the Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard reported on a match the previous evening, in which Joe Gans won the world lightweight boxing championship (in a 42-round battle—still the longest fight in modern boxing history). The paper states that the night before, Joe’s mother sent him a telegram reading, “Joe, the eyes of the world are on you. Everybody says you ought to Win. Peter Jackson will tell me the news. Bring home the bacon.” (Gans apparently responded that he “had not only the bacon, but the gravy.”)

Given the coverage of the fight, the phrase was widely reported and quickly became associated with winning—first in the boxing world, then in sports in general, and finally to monetary success in general. The phrase is still widely in use, particularly in the United States.

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