know on what side one's bread is buttered

present singular third person knows on what side one's bread is buttered · participle present knowing on what side one's bread is buttered · past knew on what side one's bread was buttered · past knew on what side one's bread is buttered · participle past known on what side one's bread was buttered · participle past known on what side one's bread is buttered

1. alternativeAlternative form of know which side one's bread is buttered on.

   Success has not inflated Gibbs’ head, but his friends are trying to do so. They have been telling the dusky boxer that there are better managers than Lavigne, but Gibbs, knowing on what side his bread is buttered, refuses to listen to their “knocks.”

   1902 August 2, “Lavigne’s Troubles with Young Gibbs”, in Oakland Tribune, volume LV, number 181, Oakland, Calif., →OCLC, page 2, column 4

   2 more examples

   “[…] She’s a born nurse, the doctor said, young as she was, and her feet never got tired, nor her aching back, nor her sleepless eyes, and she never said one cross, or one impatient, or one disrespectful word to me.” / ”Of course not,” snapped Maria, “she knew on what side her bread was buttered.”

   1889, Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin (Jennie M[aria] Drinkwater), “Eleven O’clock”, in Fourfold, New York, N.Y.: Robert Carter & Brothers […], →OCLC, page 151

   Lord Viccars managed to identify himself to her before this disaster could transpire and told her not to waken her mistress but to return to her own bed. The woman didn’t argue. She knew on what side her bread was buttered and out of whose pocket her wages were paid.

   1986 August, Maggie MacKeever, chapter 23, in Lady Sherry and the Highwayman, New York, N.Y.: Fawcett Crest, →ISBN, page 205