Keep your Q posts outta here.
Clam up!
“The derivation is more likely to come from the fuller version of the phrase, now rarely heard - ‘as happy as a clam at high water’. Hide tide is when clams are free from the attentions of predators; surely the happiest of times in the bivalve mollusc world.”
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-happy-as-a-clam.html
-John Prine
Sullen as a scallop?
and:
The word clam is slang for dollar bill. The usage is thought to originate from the various shells used as units of exchange in ancient times. In China, India, and Southeast Asia cowries were used as currency.
Messier, madame, voila le bearded clam.
The whole thing is “fried clam”.
Why do people say they’re sweating like a pig, when pigs don’t sweat. Or, why do people say it’s like pulling hen’s teeth, when hen’s don’t have teeth.
Happy as a serviced bearded clam , cause a serviced unit, is a happy unit :)
Long-neck clams...Steamers
Boil in a large pot. Add a single can of beer. By the time the boil is complete, you will have a pot full of clams and broth.
Broth to wash the residual sand off the meat of the clams and dipped in melted drawn butter...
Delicious!
People say happy as a clam because the entire body of a clam is a smile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKyGOOzXsOA
I’ve traveled all over this country
Prospecting and digging for gold
I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled
And I have been frequently sold
For each man who got rich by mining
Perceiving that hundreds grew poor
I made up my mind to try farming
The only pursuit that was sure
So, rolling my grub in my blanket
I left all my tools on the ground
I started one morning to shank it
For the country they call Puget Sound
Arriving flat broke in midwinter
I found it enveloped in fog
And covered all over with timber
Thick as hair on the back of a dog
When I looked on the prospects so gloomy
The tears trickled over my face
And I thought that my travels had brought me
To the end of the jumping-off place
I staked me a claim in the forest
And sat myself down to hard toil
For two years I chopped and I struggled
But I never got down to the soil
I tried to get out of the country
But poverty forced me to stay
Until I became an old settler
Then nothing could drive me away
And now that I’m used to the climate
I think that if a man ever found
A place to live easy and happy
That Eden is on Puget Sound
No longer the slave of ambition
I laugh at the world and its shams
As I think of my pleasant condition
Surrounded by acres of clams
http://www.balladofamerica.com/music/indexes/songs/oldsettlerssong/index.htm
Maybe they came out of their shell...
Pic looks like a big smile with his tongue hanging out.
My guess is they’re considered content sitting at the bottom of the sea or buried in the sand.
Happyas a clam in sand where people ain’t diggin’