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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

An older English name for this type of structure is a hayrick. In order to monitor the moisture content of the hay it would be tested by poking an iron rod — the proverbial needle — deep into the rick then pulling it out again, much like an oil dipstick in a car engine.

If you push the needle in too far then you would be unlikely to find it again without taking the whole thing apart.

Hence the English phrase like looking for a needle in a haystack to mean searching for something that is impossible to find. It’s just that in the original phrase the needle is a four foot long iron rod rather than a two inch steel pin.

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"the English phrase like looking for a needle in a haystack"

That's not that (particularily) English, you know? As many other expressions that crossed cultures at some point, which (in some cases like this it would) most likely have taken place even before ethnogenesis of what's currently considered English, "the needle in the haystack" has a much broader spread.

I would love to hear of analogues from other cultures. Brewer’s Phrase & Fable 14th edition (the pink one) came up with this:

“To look for a needle in a bottle of hay”, after the french botte for ‘bundle’.

On the odd use of bottle: [Puck, to Titania] I could munch your good dry oats, methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

Interestingly, haywire is derived from a frenzied behaviour likened to the chaotic uncoiling of a feel of hay baling wire.

I was walking with my French girl, I told her that I know these woods like the back of my hand. She said she knew them like the inside of her pocket.

"Wie meine Westentasche" in German – "Like my vest's (waistcoat's) pocket.

In Italian, we actually have two of them:

cercare un ago in un pagliaio

literally

looking for a needle in a haystack

or sometimes:

trovare l'ago in un pagliaio

literally

finding the needle in the haystack

the meaning is slightly different, the first is more about describing something vane, the latter is more about describing something very, very difficult or nearly impossible but that by luck or some other reason actually happened.

For the record, I believe there is very little typically Romanian in that way of making haystacks, many, many years ago (before the machines came) haystacks in Italy were made with the same techniques, maybe they actually date back to theRomans.

French expression is "chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin". First known use is 1652, source:

https://www.expressio.fr/expressions/chercher-une-aiguille-d...

(also provides equivalent expressions in several other languages).

It's the same in Dutch: "zoeken naar een speld in een hooiberg" is a well known analogy.

> I would love to hear of analogues from other cultures.

In German it's pretty much just the literal translation of the English phrase and its variations: "(Wie) die Nadel im Heuhaufen suchen" - (like) looking for the needle in the haystack, etc.

It's the same in Spanish, I'm surprised how universal this concept has become, even with people that have never understood what needles have to do with haystacks.

"Como buscar/hallar una aguja en un pajar" (like looking for/finding a needle in a haystack) means taking/achieving a nearly impossible task.

I mean it is in English, so it is quite English. Yes the idiom may be common in other cultures and languages, but that would be e.g 'the Romanian phrase {Romanian language equivalent of the phrase}' It is not implying ownership of the idiom to the English language, just that specific phrasing. Which I think we can both agree is in English, and it is a phrase.

> {Romanian language equivalent of the phrase}

Acul din vagonul cu fân.

Literal translation: The needle in the hay wagon.

I though it was:

Acul din carul cu fân

Literal translation: The needle in the hay cart

Correct, I did a double translation in Google Translate to make sure I get the literal translation, and copied the wrong part.

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