No Sky Pie on the Heavenly Menu

Curiously, I have twice within the past few days seen, in print, the phrase "pie in the sky".

The curiosity consists in the apparent acceptance that the phrase as spoken should be spelt in this way. Soon, I suppose, we shall have Radio Times's consultant 'lexicographer' (sic) answering a query about the phrase's origin.

A senior pedant such as myself (senior in years, I mean, not necessarily senior in pedantry) will be aware that this started as a mildly witty (but not very well informed) tease of the Christian belief in an afterlife: "pi in the sky when you die". "Pi" in this context is not 22 divided by 7, but "piety" - especially, perhaps, the never-ending singing of hymns as described in the Book of the Revelation of St John the Divine. A "pi-jaw", a couple of generations ago, was a religious lecture, usually addressed by an earnest adult to an erring youngster. No connection with the fabled food of shepherds or Jack Horner, or the final resting-place of four and twenty blackbirds.

I am glad to note that my opinion about the spelling is supported by the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: see under 'pi-jaw', a term apparently dating from the nineteenth century.

No Sky Pie on the Heavenly Menu