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Mighty oaks from little acorns growMeaningGreat things may come from small beginnings. Origin
Before oaks were mighty they were first either great, tall, sturdy or even just big. Examples of early variants of 'mighty oaks from little acorns grow' are found in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 1374,
Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, 1732:
and in an essay by D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797:
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations states that 'great oaks from little acorns grow' is a 14th century proverb. Unfortunately, they don't include any details to support their view. The 'mighty' version is known, in the USA at least, from the middle of the 19th century. It appeared in A. B. Johnson's The Philosophical Emperor a Political Experiment, 1841. 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. |
The word acorn doesn't come from 'oak' and 'corn', as is popularly supposed, but from the Old English 'aecern', meaning berry or fruit. The tree genus Acer comes from the same root.
