|
|
Spare the rod and spoil the childMeaningThe notion that children will only flourish if chastised, physically or otherwise, for any wrongdoing. Origin
[by 'spill', Butler did mean spoil - that was an alternative spelling at the time] The precise words were Butler's, but the proverbial notion is much older. William Langland's The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, 1377, includes this line:
'Spilleth' is used to mean 'spoils', as in Butler's poem. 'Sprynge' was commonly used in mediaeval English to mean the verb 'spring', i.e. 'rise quickly, at a bound'. It seems that Langland was using here as a synonym for 'sprig', i.e. rod or offshoot of a plant, although the OED has no other records of 'sprynge' being used that way. English version of the Bible pre-1377 don't include the line in the form we now use, but they do contain a similar thought, and this is probably where Butler took it from. In the King James Version, Proverbs 13:24, we find:
See also: the List of Proverbs. Phrasefinder is also on
Tudor Phrases and Sayings - a book on the meanings and origins of the phrases and sayings that Shakespeare and Henry VIII used that we use still use every day. |
This phrase has quite a long genesis. The coiner of the version that we use in everyday speech was Samuel Butler, in Hudibras, the satirical poem on the factions involved in the English Civil War, which was first published in 1662:
