Meaning & Analysis
Literally, the proverb means to lower someone by a 'peg,' 'buttonhole,' or 'hole'—as on a scale, instrument, or garment—thus bringing them down to a lower position or status.
Insights
Humbling the Proud
The phrase refers to putting someone in their place—especially someone who is arrogant, boastful, or overly confident—by reducing their standing, status, or self-importance.
Correction or Reprimand
It denotes an act of correction, discipline, or chastening, making it clear that inappropriate behavior or pretension will be met with social or verbal rebuke.
Leveling Hierarchies
The proverb can also signal the reassertion of social order or equality, bringing the presumptuous back to the level of their peers.
Historical Symbolism
The expression likely draws from practices such as adjusting pegs on a musical instrument (to lower pitch), or adjusting garments and scales, all of which use pegs or holes to mark gradations. The metaphor became a vivid way to describe a reduction in pride or status.
Literary and Cultural Resonance
The phrase is widely attested in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, including Shakespeare and Lyly. It reflects the period’s fascination with wit, status, and social correction—often through sharp verbal play.
Psychological Dimensions
The proverb taps into the psychological satisfaction and social necessity of correcting the arrogant, while also warning against pride by invoking the threat of public comeuppance.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The lowering of a peg or buttonhole serves as a vivid metaphor for reducing pride, status, or pretension, transforming an abstract action into a concrete, memorable image.
Ellipsis
The phrase often omits the object of lowering, making it flexible and easily adaptable to various contexts—whether literal, social, or moral.
Colloquialism
The use of everyday objects like pegs and buttonholes situates the proverb in the realm of familiar, accessible speech, increasing its practical resonance.
Transcription
Quotations
Now haue at you all my gaffers of the rayling religion, tis I that must take you a peg lower.
Hee hath taken his thoughts a hole lower.
The hard lodging on the boards [will] take their flesh downe a button hole lower.
Decline me, or take me a hole lower, as the proverb is.
The scrubbes are so perke now, if wee doe not take them downe a hole lower, the slaves will crowe over us.
He hath taken him an hole lower.
They did not onely dispute the case with him . . but also they went more roundly and roughly to worke with them, taking them downe a pinne or two lower.
I'd see the tallest beefeater on you all . . knocking my wife down, and I'll bring him a button hole lower.
Had not Daplusse taken him a button lower.
We still have worsted all your Holy Tricks . . And took your Grandees down a peg.
To take one a peg lower.
I'le take you down a peg.—teach you better manners.
To pull one down a peg.
Shakespeare Citations
Master, let me take you a button-hole lower.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.