Spare the rod and spoil the child

Meaning

The notion that children will only flourish if chastised, physically or otherwise, for any wrongdoing.

Origin

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:

Love is a Boy,
by Poets styl'd,
Then Spare the Rod,
and spill the Child.

[by 'spill', Butler did mean spoil - that was an alternative spelling at the time]

The words were Butler's, but the notion is much older. John Skelton's Magnyfycence, a goodly interlude and a mery, circa 1520, includes this:

"There is nothynge that more dyspleaseth God Than from theyr chyldren to spare the rod Of correccyon."

The same thought occurs in the Bible and is first listed in John Coverdale's 1535 translation, in Proverbs:

"He that spareth the rodde, hateth his sonne."

The same thought is again found in an even older text, Aelfric's Homilies, circa 1000:

"Se ye sparas his gyrde, he hatas his cild."

[gyrde is girdle, i.e. belt]

Aelfric's language is removed somewhat from the phrase as we now know it, but there's little doubt that what he was saying was 'spare the rod and spoil the child'.

See also: the List of Proverbs.