Meaning & Analysis
Someone or something is being cooked or heated in its own rendered fat, implying a self-contained process of being broken down by its own substance.
Insights
Self-Inflicted Suffering
The proverb signifies a state of self-inflicted misery, where an individual's suffering is a direct result of their own negative emotions, such as anger, jealousy, or anxiety. They are tormented by forces originating within themselves.
Poetic Justice
It illustrates a form of poetic justice where a person is undone by their own character flaws, vices, or excesses. The very qualities that define them become the instruments of their distress.
Destructive Passion
The imagery suggests being consumed by one's own unchecked passions. Like a fire melting something 'in its own grease', powerful desires like lust or greed can become self-destructive forces.
Visceral Embodiment
The proverb uses graphic and visceral culinary imagery to make an abstract internal state—psychological torment—tangible and vivid. The unpleasantness of frying in hot grease powerfully conveys the intensity of self-inflicted suffering.
Psychological Rumination
This proverb perfectly captures the psychological concept of rumination, where an individual is trapped in a destructive cycle of their own negative thoughts (anger, jealousy, anxiety), effectively being 'cooked' by their own internal state.
Moral and Physical Consequence
The proverb reflects an early modern worldview linking moral and physical states. As seen in Shakespeare's depiction of Falstaff, a man of literal and metaphorical 'grease', it suggests that a person's own vices and excesses (lust, gluttony) become the very substance of their eventual downfall.
Rhetorical Devices
Culinary Metaphor
The central device where 'frying' or 'stewing' represents suffering, and 'grease' symbolizes the internal flaws or passions causing it.
Grotesque Imagery
The image of a person literally stewing in their own fat is grotesque and repulsive, effectively emphasizing the consuming and unpleasant nature of the self-inflicted torment.
Transcription
Quotations
He lyeth and fryeth in his owne greace for anger.
She fryeth in her owne grease .. If she be angry, beshrew her angry harte.
The sisters being thus on all sides rejected .. began to melt in their owne grease.
See how he basts himselfe in his owne greace.
Marina fryes in her own grease.
The Gentleman has stew'd him in his own Sawce.
Why goodman Tallow, doe not frett so in your owne grease.
There they stew, In their own Grease till Morning.
To melt, or fry in ones own grease.
(To fry in).
And lie like Abbey-Lubbers stew'd in their own Greases.
Shakespeare Citations
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax And melt in her own fire.
Entertain him with hope till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.
Stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease.
Cross References
- See St., no. 2107.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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