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Reader question: Please explain “raw end of the deal” in this passage: Do men get the raw end of the deal in today’s society when it comes to time at home with their children? Is there less sympathy for working fathers than for mothers? My comments: In any deal, a transaction of buying and selling for example, the buyer and the seller represent both ends of the transaction, like the two sides of a weighing machine. If the seller gets the better of the buyer – by setting a higher price than usual – the seller gets the better deal. If the buyer gets the better of the seller, well, that never happens. That seldom happens, at any rate. Perhaps sometimes the seller loses his mind in the bargaining process the buyer gets off the hook once or twice but that kind of situation rarely happens. In fact, it happens so rarely that I don’t mind neglecting it altogether and remind you only that it is the buyer who gets the raw deal all the time. Raw deal? Yeah, that’s the Americanism in question here, what “raw end of the deal” means. This phrase originates in the game of poker, as a matter of fact – deal, noun, refers to the handful of cards you have after the dealer has dealt (distributed) them at the beginning of each game. Raw deal means your cards are poor, raw meaning crude, unrefined, bad. Raw, as raw meat, crude and cruel – cruel being descriptive of how you feel. | 
