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Message:: [QUOTE="lehmansterms, post: 2768240, member: 80804"]I believe somewhere the champion of "Manifest Destiny" has become confused and conflated with an age-old figure of speech.  James K. Polk was the 11th president of the US, and if not for the expansionist theory he espoused and enabled would likely be even less well-known than his already obscure niche in American History. I'm aware of him mainly because my next-door neighbor (classmate and fellow coin collector) when I was a teen was his great-great-grandson.  He went on to make a fortune for himself and gave the name some modern fame building consumer electronics, He was mainly famous for his speakers which were, at one point, quite cutting-edge as I understand it. The old term is "pig in a poke" - a "poke" being any sort of makeshift closed bag, pouch, sack or bindle - something into which one could quickly poke some object or substance. You could have a "poke" of loose tobacco, to use a common example. Presumably, one wouldn't buy a pig without seeing it, and aside from begging the question of why it were thus packaged, it would not afford the purchaser much prior information about his incipient purchase.[/QUOTE]