Lion's Share

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The Lion's Share is an expression meaning "the larger of two or more amounts". For example, if there are ten bottles of beer lined up on a wall, and one person takes six of them, that person is said to have the lion's share. The word Lion is used because the lion is commonly linked with regality since it is called "the king of the cats".

In an Aesop's Fable, the lion's share is not defined this way, but in fact represents the complete amount; that is, in the example above, using the fable as a guideline, the lion's share would be all ten bottles of beer. In the fable, a lion, fox, jackal, and wolf go hunting, successfully killing a deer. It is divided into four parts; the lion taking the first quarter because he is king of the beasts, the second quarter because he is the arbiter (presumably, of who gets which portions of the deer), the third quarter because of his help in catching the deer, and finally, the fourth quarter for his superior strength. In some variants of the fable, the lion takes three-quarters (using a similar rationale), letting the three other animals fight over the remaining quarter, which is more in line with the common use of the term to mean the "majority" rather than "all".