Meaning & Analysis
Refers to the historical medical practice of uroscopy, where a physician inspects a patient's urine ('water') to diagnose their physical health and ailments.
Insights
Intrusive Scrutiny
To closely and suspiciously observe someone's actions and behavior in order to discern their secret intentions, weaknesses, or true character.
Diagnosing Motives
Symbolizes the act of analyzing a person or situation to uncover hidden truths or underlying problems, much like a doctor diagnosing a concealed illness.
Vigilant Surveillance
Represents maintaining a close watch over a rival or threat, anticipating their next move and looking for vulnerabilities to exploit.
Historical Medical Practice
The proverb is rooted entirely in the medieval and Renaissance practice of uroscopy or 'water-casting', where inspecting urine was a primary, though often satirized, method of medical diagnosis believed to reveal the body's hidden ailments.
Psychology of Exposure
Reflects a deep-seated anxiety about having one's inner self—be it physical health or secret desires—exposed and judged. The act of 'watching one's water' implies a power dynamic between the observer and the observed.
Shakespearean Elevation
Shakespeare powerfully extends the metaphor in 'Macbeth', where Macbeth asks a doctor to 'cast the water of my land', elevating the concept from a personal medical diagnosis to a profound inquiry into the political sickness of an entire nation.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The entire phrase is a metaphor, using the concrete medical act of uroscopy to represent the abstract process of investigating and understanding another person's hidden state.
Idiom
Functions as a fixed idiom where 'water' stands for one's overall condition and 'looking to it' means to investigate it, making the phrase's meaning non-literal.
Synecdoche
Urine ('water') acts as a synecdoche, a part that stands for the whole of a person's physical and even psychological condition, representing all their hidden vulnerabilities and secrets.
Transcription
Quotations
I haue shewid thy water to thy phesycyon.
By my faith you come to loke in my water.
I haue cast your water, and see as deepe into your desire, as he that hadde diued euerie day into your bosome.
Heele looke vnto your water well enough.
Set rascals to undermine her, or look to her water, as they say?
A man may know his disease by his water, and by the feeling of his pulse.
Yes still I'le watch his water, he shall pay for't.
Ile look into his water hereafter.
This designe was well scaped; but I'le watch your waters I warrant you.
I'll watch your water.
I .. judged he had been whipping it in with the Gentlewoman before mentioned, tho 'twas not convenient to tell him so, lest his Wife should watch his Waters more narrowly than she had done.
Shakespeare Citations
Sirrah .. what says the doctor to my water? —He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he knew for.
If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease .. I would applaud thee.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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