idioms - Can "the chickens have come home to roost" have positive as well as negative connotations?


In answering a recent EL&U question (Idiom for the phrase "someone who gets what he deserved"), I cited the phrase "The chickens have come home to roost," and said that it "applies whether the person deserved good results and got them or deserved bad results and got them."


But an astute commenter observed "I don't think I've ever heard that idiom used in a good context," which led me to wonder whether I was wrong in claiming that the saying focused strictly on the justice of the chickens' homecoming and not on whether their presence was injurious or beneficial to the person (or thing) so visited.


I subsequently found that the phrase is indeed strongly tilted toward the suggestion that that the metaphorical chickens are undesirable results of past conduct or action. Specifically, the phrase seems to have originated with a proverb equating curses to chickens returning home to roost.


But is the connection of the phrase to curses being lost in modern, informal usage? Can the phrase reasonably be used today to express a notion of either positive or negative consequences flowing from correspondingly positive or negative actions? And finally, what is the origin of the proverb about curses resembling chickens that come home to roost?




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