Meaning & Analysis
To light a candle or lamp during the day, which is a pointless and wasteful act since the sun is already providing ample light.
Insights
Wasting Time
The proverb is a powerful metaphor for wasting time on trivial, unnecessary, or prolonged activities. Just as a candle's light is useless in the sun, effort expended on pointless endeavors is a squandering of one's limited time.
Superfluous Effort
It criticizes redundant actions or stating the obvious. To 'burn daylight' is to elaborate on something that is already perfectly clear, akin to adding a lamp's feeble glow to the brightness of day.
Inefficiency and Foolishness
The act symbolizes poor judgment or a lack of practical sense. It implies a failure to recognize and utilize available resources (like sunlight), leading to inefficient and foolish behavior.
Economic and Historical Context
Originating in an era when artificial light from candles or lamps was a costly commodity, the proverb's admonition against waste carried significant economic weight. Its citation by Erasmus confirms classical roots, highlighting a timeless critique of superfluous actions.
Literary Popularization
Shakespeare famously used this proverb, notably in 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Richard II', where he explicitly defines it as wasting time through delay. His usage helped popularize the phrase, cementing its meaning as a literary rebuke of inefficiency.
Psychology of Procrastination
The proverb offers a psychological critique of unproductive activity. It targets the human tendency to engage in pointless tasks or 'busy work' that creates an illusion of progress while actually squandering valuable time and resources.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The core of the proverb is a metaphor where the tangible waste of a candle or lamp represents the intangible waste of time, effort, or words.
Imagery
The phrase creates a potent and paradoxical visual of a lit candle in bright sunshine, an image that immediately and memorably conveys the idea of uselessness.
Irony
There is a strong situational irony in using an object designed to create light at the very moment it is most useless, effectively highlighting the absurdity of the action.
Transcription
Quotations
Lucernam adhibes in meridie.
But why burne we day light?
Tyme rouleth on, I doe but daylight burne.
Light me your torches then.—Then we burne day light.
'Sblood! we burn day light; they will think, anon, We are afraid to see their glittering swords.
How dost thou burne thy day-light to these thy re-gardlesse children?
Put out your nose good lady You burn day-light.
For such . . do burn day-light in pelting against petty towns in the out-skirts of a land.
We burn day-light.
To burn day-light.
To burn day-light.
To speak more than needs in a plain case.
That is, you trifle away the Time.
No candles yet . . don't let us burn day-light.
Shakespeare Citations
Come, we burn daylight, ho! . . I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
We burn daylight. Here, read, read!
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.