What does the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” come from and What does it mean?

Photo of author

Karen Hill

The phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” means to let a matter or person which at the present is at rest stay at rest, rather than to create a disturbance by bringing the matter up again or arousing the person.

Chaucer wrote this in just the reverse form, “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake” (Troylus and Criseyde, 1374), and it was still so recorded some two hundred years later by John Heywood (A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes, 1562), “It is ill wakyng of a sleapyng dogge.”

But by the time of Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, 1850) it had been turned about into the order of today’s usage.

Related Posts

  1. What does the phrase “to lie in one’s teeth” mean and Where does it come from?
  2. Where Did the Phrase “Barefaced Lie” Come From and What Does the Expression Mean?
  3. What does the phrase “to let the old cat die” mean and Where does it come from?
  4. Where does the phrase “let the cat out of the bag” come from and What does it mean?
  5. How does the blood-sucking “tsetse” fly spread African sleeping sickness and what does the word mean in African?
  6. Where Did the Phrase “Let Her Rip” Come From and What Does the Expression Mean?