Meaning & Analysis
In a group of pigs feeding, the quiet one that does not squeal or fight often ends up eating all the leftover brewing mash (draff) while the others are distracted.
Insights
Deceptive Appearances
A person who appears quiet, unassuming, or harmless may be the most cunning and acquisitive, securing the greatest advantages while avoiding attention. Their silence is a mask for ambition.
Quiet Competence
It suggests that those who work diligently and without fanfare are often the most successful. Their focus is on the task (eating the draff), not on the performance of the task, leading to greater rewards.
Cunning Opportunism
The proverb describes an opportunist who observes silently, waiting for the right moment to act. While others are loud and contentious, the quiet actor seizes the prize unnoticed.
Hidden Strengths
It warns against underestimating those who are not vocal or assertive. Outward passivity can conceal a determined and effective nature that ultimately achieves total success.
Psychological Underestimation
The proverb taps into a deep-seated psychological bias where quietness is often misinterpreted as passivity or harmlessness. It serves as a cautionary reminder that introverted or unassuming individuals can possess formidable ambition and strategic depth, operating effectively without drawing scrutiny.
Agrarian Social Observation
Rooted in agrarian life, the proverb uses the common image of a pig—an animal associated with greed—to comment on human social dynamics. It reflects a timeless folk wisdom about the dangers of judging by appearances, a lesson as relevant in a corporate boardroom as it was on a farm.
Strategy of Silence
This proverb champions a strategy of acting covertly to achieve one's goals. By avoiding loud pronouncements or displays of ambition, the 'still sow' circumvents competition and resistance, accumulating resources or power while others are distracted. The quotations linking it to 'roguish' and 'knavish' behavior highlight its association with cunning and dissimulation.
Literary and Cultural Currency
Shakespeare's use of the variant 'Still Swine eats all the draff' in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' underscores the proverb's cultural currency in the Elizabethan era as a well-known piece of folk wisdom used to expose deceptive character.
Rhetorical Devices
Animal Metaphor
The proverb uses the sow as a metaphor for human behavior, translating a common barnyard observation into a lesson about social dynamics.
Alliteration
The repetition of the 's' sound in 'still sow' creates a soft, hissing quality that enhances the proverb's memorable, aphoristic feel and subtly evokes a sense of stealth.
Antithesis
The proverb creates a powerful contrast between the sow's passive appearance ('still') and its highly successful, aggressive action ('eats up all the draff'), highlighting the core theme of hidden intent.
Transcription
Quotations
(A still sowe).
Ane still sow eatis all the draff.
Then my quick-sprighted lasse can speake: for who Knowes not the old said saw of the Still Sow.
The still sow eates all the draffe; and no question the most smoother tovngued fellow, the more arrant knaue.
Still sowes eat all the draff.
A close, slie, lurking knaue, a stil sow as we say.
Still sow eates all the draffe.
(eates all the draff).
Ile nere trust smooth'fac'd Tile-man for his sake. —Mother, the still Sow eates up all the draffe.
To pretend one thing, and do another, to dissemble; the English usually say, The still Sow eats up all the Draugh.
The English say, To play the still Sow.
[As in a.1598 Ferg.].
(eats all the draff).
*Spoken to Persons who look demurely, but are roguish.
(Draft).
Shakespeare Citations
'Tis old but true, Still Swine eats all the draff.
Cross References
- See Dür., II, no. 316.
- L35 The humble (meek) lamb sucks its own dam and others also.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.