Pigeons Home To Roost??

[annalou]

Please can anyone tell me what this statement/phase means?? It seems to me that the pigeons are finally coming home to roost..... Any answers greatly appreciated!! :-)

[Quizmonster]

It's usually chickens rather than pigeons. Click here and you'll find lots of sites all about it. Just click on any or all of them!

[ASKRONN]

all over england,, people have pigeons,,,,, most days they are released from their,, crees,, or lofts,, to get a bit of excercise .....mostly they return..to the lofts ,, to roost for the night,,their owners count them, to see they all came ""home to roost"",,,,in scotland ,, pigeon fanciers,, try to entice other peoples birds into their crees,,, if they succeed ,,they gain a bird,,,,,, askronn...

[Quizmonster]

The point is, Anna, that the saying really has nothing whatever to do with pigeons or chickens! What it means is that the effects/results of someone's bad actions are finally beginning to catch up with him. He may have got away with wrondoing for years but now - at last - everything is conspiring to see that he gets his just punishment. It's as if the bad things are birds he has released into the world and they are now flying home to the nest they belong in.

[annalou]

yes thanks Quizmonster! you've clarified that quite nicely! thanks once again!

[VS Prasad]

The chickens have come home to roost:

Chickens scratch around in the barnyard, in the fields and woods during the day. But at night they come home to the hen-house to roost. This saying is comparing a person's evil or foolish deeds to chickens. If a person does wrong, the "payback" might not be immediate. But at some point, at the end of the day, those "chickens" will come home to roost. "One has to face the consequences of one's past actions. In English, the proverb goes back to Chaucer's 'Parson's Tale' (c 1390). It was also know to Terence (about 190-159 B.C.) First attested in the United States in the 'Life of Jefferson S. Batkins' (1871). The proverb is found in varying forms: Curses, like chickens, come home to roost; Sooner or later chickens, come home to roost..." From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/mes sages/55.html

PHRASE:
come home to roost (of a scheme, etc.) recoil unfavorably upon the originator: ensuring that the liability does not come home to roost.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-roost.ht ml