Meaning & Analysis
A sieve is a mesh-bottomed utensil that cannot hold water or other liquids because it is designed for substances to pass through it. To be like a sieve is to be full of holes and incapable of retaining contents.
Insights
Inability to Keep Secrets
The most common metaphorical meaning is the inability to keep secrets. Like water passing through a sieve, confidential information is quickly and carelessly revealed by a person who is indiscreet or a gossip.
Financial Profligacy
The proverb describes someone who is financially irresponsible or wasteful. Money flows through their hands as easily as water through a sieve; they are unable to save or 'hoard' it.
Poor Retention of Knowledge
More broadly, the simile can refer to someone with a poor memory or a general inability to retain information or knowledge. Facts and instructions 'go in one ear and out the other', passing through their mind without being held.
Symbolism of a Domestic Object
The sieve, an ordinary domestic tool used for separation, is repurposed here to symbolize failure of containment. Its universally understood function makes the proverb's meaning immediately accessible, representing a person who cannot hold onto valuable things, be they secrets, money, or information.
Classical Allusion
The proverb taps into the ancient Greek myth of the Danaides, who were condemned to the futile task of carrying water in a sieve for eternity. This classical allusion deepens the proverb's resonance, associating it not just with simple carelessness but with a sense of perpetual, frustrating failure.
Psychological Dimension
The proverb critiques a specific character flaw: a lack of discretion or self-control. Psychologically, it points to an inability to regulate one's impulses, whether the impulse is to share gossip, spend money frivolously, or simply forget important information.
Gendered Connotations
Early quotations, such as Dekker's comparison of harlots to sieves, reveal a gendered application of the proverb, associating the inability to hold money or secrets with women. This highlights a historical bias where traits like gossip and financial imprudence were stereotypically linked to femininity.
Rhetorical Devices
Simile
The proverb is a direct simile, using 'like a' to create a powerful and easily understood comparison between a person's character and the functional properties of a sieve.
Material Symbolism
The physical object of the sieve serves as a potent symbol for abstract concepts like indiscretion, wastefulness, and intellectual porousness. Its tangible quality makes the abstract flaw vivid and concrete.
Transcription
Quotations
Is she poore? ... Then she's a right Strumpet ... Siues can hold no water, nor Harlots hoord vp money.
He holds like a riddle [sieve].
But for her especially, he never meant to make her his She-Confessor, who was as open as a Sieve, that could not hold water.
To be like a Sive, viz. which doth not retain, but all goes through.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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