Meaning & Analysis
Do not look directly up at someone chopping wood or performing a similar activity overhead, as a small piece of debris (a chip) could fall and injure your eye.
Insights
Perils of Ambition
The proverb serves as a powerful warning against excessive ambition or aspiring to a status far beyond one's current position. The 'chip in the eye' symbolizes a sudden, humbling setback or failure that results from such overreach.
Distraction from Reality
It cautions against being so focused on lofty, abstract goals that one becomes oblivious to immediate, practical dangers. 'Looking high' represents distraction, while the 'chip' is the mundane but painful reality one has overlooked.
Danger of Scrutinizing Superiors
The saying advises against challenging or scrutinizing those in higher authority too closely. Prying into the affairs of the powerful ('looking too high') can result in swift and unpleasant retribution.
Social Hierarchy and Control
This proverb strongly reflects the rigid social hierarchies of the late medieval and early modern periods, functioning as a tool of social control to discourage individuals from aspiring beyond their station. The 'chip' symbolizes the swift, sharp rebuke from superiors against social climbing.
Psychology of Ambition
Psychologically, the proverb taps into the fear of humiliation. The image of a small but painful and blinding chip in the eye makes the abstract danger of over-ambition feel immediate and personal, encouraging a risk-averse mindset.
From Physical to Metaphorical
The proverb's effectiveness lies in its powerful leap from a concrete physical danger—literally getting a wood chip in your eye from looking up at a woodcutter—to a complex abstract warning about the perils of hubris and social overreach.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The core of the proverb is the metaphor where 'looking high' represents ambition and the 'chip' symbolizes the resulting painful consequence, making an abstract social warning concrete.
Imagery
The vivid, visceral image of a chip falling into an eye creates a memorable and universally understood picture of a small but irritating and disabling injury, effectively conveying the proverb's warning.
Cause-and-Effect Warning
The proverb is structured as a direct command ('Look not...') followed by a consequence ('lest a chip...'), giving it an authoritative and cautionary tone that is easy to remember and apply.
Transcription
Quotations
Clime not to hie, lest chipis fall in thin eie.
Looke not too hie, least that a chip fall in thine eye.
In the choyce of a wife .. one looketh high as one that feareth no chips.
Thou art too crank [bold], and crowdest all too high; Beware a chip fall not into thine eye.
Who looketh hye, may haue a chip fall in his eye.
(fall into thine eie)
(in thine eye)
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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