luu jää vetäjän käteen

[Satish]

Can someone help me with the idiom - luu jää vetäjän käteen? The literal translation is "to be left with the bone in your hand" and the nearest English equivalent is "to get the short end of the stick". Googling for examples, the best example I could find is:

Mutta sotkekoon VR oman pesänsä, luu jää vielä vetäjän käteen.

The word vetäjä is confusing me since it translates to leader as well as "drawer". I think this is similar to when 2 people pull on a Christmas cracker and someone gets the better outcome!

Does the idiom then mean that the person who ends up with the bone gets the undesirable outcome?

Source: Parempi pyy pivossa kuin two in the bush, Paul Westlake, Krista Partti Sagur, Eeva-Liisa Pitkänen, WSOY, 2002.

[sammy]

Vetäjä... "someone who draws/pulls" - derived from vetää

Just like in:

Ajaa > ajaja (driver)
Hiitää > hiihtäjä (skier)

You also see the saying in the form "luu jää vetävän käteen"

Vetävä, then, rather similarly refers to "someone who draws/pulls", but vetävä, ajava, hiihtävä etc. can not be used to say "driver, skier" and so on.

To further confuse you, vetävä CAN be used to refer to a future event:

Hän on vetävä voittoarvan > he shall draw the winning lottery ticket

...but it's a bit biblical, as in

Katso, se päivä on tuleva > lo, the day shall come

(Anyway, the saying you refer to -with the bone- usually means that "you may end up with nothing if you start with too high hopes and haven't thought it over before you begin")

[Jukka Aho]

Can someone help me with the idiom - luu jää vetäjän käteen? The literal translation is "to be left with the bone in your hand" [...] I think this is similar to when 2 people pull on a Christmas cracker and someone gets the better outcome!

I’d say the “literal translation” is as follows:

“The most likely (expected) outcome from pulling that hard is that you will be left with (only) a bone in your hand!”

As usual with idioms, It’s impossible to say with any certainty what specific thing the phrasing has originally referred to... but I’d imagine it could have been something like fighting over a piece of (tender) meat... So if you push your luck and just keep pulling and pulling that piece of meat (or whatever it is you’re wanting to get) with no consideration about reasonable limits and where to stop, the final outcome might well be that you will not get any of that thing which you originally wanted, in the end...

Does the idiom then mean that the person who ends up with the bone gets the undesirable outcome?

Yes, with the sense that he was “pulling” (pushing for it!) too hard – he didn’t know where to stop, reasonably speaking... so it all came out much worse than he expected. The “lesson” in this saying is that if the referred person had stopped “pulling” (pushing for it) earlier and not gone overboard with his demands or stubborn perseverance, the outcome might have been better for him.

[Satish]

Thanks sammy and Jukka As usual, there are more nuances than I thought... Talking about nuances... I don't think I need to to think too much about sopii kuin hajuvesi lihapullaan....

[Keravalainen]

Hi!
No wonder you are confused! That idiotic idiom is just one of those mixed ones, that young confused journalists sometimes tend to use without even thinking of their proper meaning.
That idiom is a mixture of two old sayings: 1) "Pää jää vetäjän käteen" and 2) "Luu jää jakajan käteen".
- Both of those should be quite understandable, and they are also commonly used in many languages.

[Pursuivant]

I think its an americanizm from pulling the turkey bone... which we don't have... "the short end of the stick" would be more common, as "vetää pitkää tikkua" (pull the long straw) is a common thing here too.

I'm more common with "pää jää vetäjän käteen" - i.e. you pull and you get the "knob" in hand...

[Jukka Aho]

I'm more common with "pää jää vetäjän käteen" - i.e. you pull and you get the "knob" in hand...

You could interpret this in a couple of ways. Either the thing you’re pulling in and wanting to have for yourself can’t take the tension and breaks apart from the force of pulling; leaving you with only one end in your hand – the most desirable bulk of it being pulled out of your reach. This is similar to the fighting-over-a-piece-of-meat-and-being-left-with-only-a-bone-in-your-hand idiom above, although a bit more abstract.

Or, you could interpret the pulled thing being something thread-like or rope-like: seemingly in endless supply at the time when you first begin pulling it in and hoarding it for yourself... but if you just keep on pulling and pulling, beyond any reasonable limits, maybe at some point you will suddenly come to see there wasn’t as much of it as you originally thought... the result being, you now have the other end in your hand, and it all ends there. If you originally planned on it being in endless thing, or lasting longer, or if you were counting on being able to pull in “more of the good thing” indefinitely, this might be a harsh realization...

These idioms are often used by outside observers when they suspect someone is probably taking their demands a bit too far – pushing their luck too much - and when it is likely all going to stop in an abrupt fashion; setting you back in some way that will be rather inconvenient... and possibly even leave you with less in your hand than what you originally began with.

Jos Pekka jatkaa tuota, hänelle käy vielä huonosti... siinä jää pää vetävän käteen.

For example, in a business setting, milking some sort of a “cash cow” until it can no longer take it and goes belly up – leaving you with no cash cow and no cash – could be such a situation. Or if you think you’re irreplaceable in the workplace and start making ever-increasing, unrealistic demands for better pay and benefits you might succeed in that for a while but will perhaps later find out they want to replace you with some guy with more moderate demands, and you’re now out of job... i.e. you kept at pulling in the “good thing” for too long and suddenly have the end of the thread in your hand.

[Pursuivant]

I was thinking of something like trying to force a door open, and the handle comes off...

[sammy]

I'm more common with "pää jää vetäjän käteen" - i.e. you pull and you get the "knob" in hand...

I was thinking of something like trying to force a door open, and the handle comes off...

Some other (rather painful) interpretations also might spring to mind...