What does the saying "Snowing to beat the band" Mean?

by nubui

Question by doublejsports: What does the saying "Snowing to beat the band" Mean?
Just wondering what the saying "Snowing to beat the band" actually means and where it originated from


Best answer:

Answer by 1ofSelby's
Now THIS is a good question and tough as well. This is what I found after doing a little digging: From a little skit in 1900 by Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven, in which he humorously retells Aesop’s fable:

“Sweet fowl,” he said, “I understand
You’re more than merely natty:
I hear you sing to beat the band
And Adelina Patti.
Pray render with your liquid tongue
A bit from ‘Gotterdammerung’.”

And so it seems that to beat the band originally meant that you sang or played or shouted louder even than an orchestra and so, by later extension, came to refer to anything superlative, in other words it can't snow harder than it is now snowing i.e. it's snowing to beat the band.

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