"The pot calling the pot black" ( Persian: دیگ به دیگ می گوید رویت سیاه), is a common proverbial idiom in Persian to describe hypocritical encounters.
That your blackness is mirrored in me." Similar themes in antiquity "Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot įor I am so clean – without blemish or blot – The point is illustrated by a poem that appeared anonymously in an early issue of St. For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality, an Atheist against Idolatry, a Tyrant against Rebellion, or a Lyer against Forgery, and a Drunkard against Intemperance, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black." īut, apart from the final example in this passage, there is no strict accord between the behaviour of the critic and the person censured.Īn alternative modern interpretation, far removed from the original intention, argues that while the pot is sooty (from being placed on a fire), the kettle is polished and shiny hence, when the pot accuses the kettle of being black, it is the pot's own sooty reflection that it sees: the pot accuses the kettle of a fault that only the pot has, rather than one that they share. "If thou hast not conquer'd thy self in that which is thy own particular Weakness, thou hast no Title to Virtue, tho' thou art free of other Men's. A nearer approach to the present wording is provided by William Penn in his collection Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims (1682):
This translation was also recorded in England soon afterwards as "The pot calls the pan burnt-arse" in John Clarke's collection of proverbs, Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina (1639). Among several variations, the one where the pan addresses the pot as culinegra (black-arse) makes clear that they are dirtied in common by contact with the cooking fire. It is identified as a proverb ( refrán) in the text, functioning as a retort to the person who criticises another of the same defect that he plainly has.
The protagonist is growing increasingly restive under the criticisms of his servant Sancho Panza, one of which is that "You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, 'Avant, black-browes'." The Spanish text at this point reads: Dijo el sartén a la caldera, Quítate allá ojinegra (Said the pan to the pot, get out of there black-eyes). The earliest appearance of the idiom is in Thomas Shelton's 1620 translation of the Spanish novel Don Quixote.
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