Meaning & Analysis
To cause a malfunction or disruption within the mechanism of a clock (horologue), often attributed to a mischievous or malevolent force, like the devil, making it unreliable.
Insights
Willful Disruption
To deliberately introduce chaos, confusion, or conflict into a previously stable and orderly system, situation, or plan.
Deceptive Influence
To act as a hidden, corrupting force that makes something appear functional on the surface while rendering it fundamentally unreliable or false.
Malicious Sabotage
Describes the act of intentionally and mischievously interfering with a process or relationship, causing it to fail or go awry.
Symbol of Order vs. Chaos
The 'horologue' (clock) was a powerful Renaissance symbol of civic order, precision, and divine regularity. The 'devil' represents the antithetical force of chaos, deception, and sin, making the proverb a concise allegory for the disruption of a well-regulated system.
Personification of Failure
The proverb reflects a pre-modern tendency to personify complex mechanical failures or inexplicable disruptions as the work of a malevolent entity. It attributes agency to chaos, turning a technical problem into a moral or supernatural one.
Mechanical and Moral Deception
The quotations link the devil's presence to the clock 'lying'. This highlights a cultural anxiety that new technologies (like clocks), while promising truth and precision, could also be sources of sophisticated deception, a fear that resonates with modern concerns about technology.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The entire phrase is a powerful metaphor where the 'horologue' represents any ordered system and the 'devil' represents any disruptive or corrupting influence.
Personification
Abstract concepts like chaos, error, and malice are personified as 'the devil', a tangible agent of disruption, making the idea more vivid and memorable.
Archaism
The use of the archaic term 'horologue' instead of 'clock' lends the proverb a historical weight and evocative power, rooting it in a specific technological and cultural era.
Transcription
Quotations
Some for a tryfull pley the deuyll in the orlege.
Here is the deuill in thorologe, ye maie saie.
What will he? —Play the deuill in the horologe.
The diuell is in thorologe, the houres to trye, Searche houres by the sunne, the deuylls dyall wyll lye.
But tush thy gossips will stand vpon it, that Martins Clocke goes true, though the Diuell were in the Horologe.
Finding nothing in all those pestilent and Virulent sheetes of wast-paper, but meere-meere forgeryes, and the Diuell in the horologe.
The deuills in the horolodge: I thinke so; For the clockes lye faster [ofte] then they go.
The devil's in the orologe.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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