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Origin documented
“You can't get a quart into a pint pot”
What it means
Some things simply will not fit.
Where it comes from
A quart is exactly two pints, so the impossibility is not approximate but arithmetic. The phrase works because everyone knew both vessels by sight.
How sure are we?
Attested from the nineteenth century, and unusual among proverbs in being literally rather than metaphorically true. The pint and quart pots were standard, stamped and familiar.