the chickens come home to roost
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.94 in modern English
49
Scrabble Score
26
Letters
6
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
proverb
A person's past wrongdoings will return to negatively affect them.
Example Sentences
- "1846, Lydia Maria Child, The Mother's Book, C.S. Francis & Co. (6th ed., 1st ed. from 1844), page 98. Never were truer words than the Spanish proverb, ‘All lies, like chickens, come home to roost.’"
- "Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."
- "I suppose you could blame it on my generation, chickens from the 60s finally coming into roost."
- "Malcolm X ain't never lie; Chickens do come home to roost! And you would think that a senator from Kentucky would know that better than anyone."
- "Opponents see the latest indictments as a case of the chickens coming home to roost."
Etymology
19th century. First attested as lies, like chickens, come home to roost, although the slightly later curses, like chickens, come home to roost was more common. Both are often said to be Spanish or Turkish in origin. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs notes that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in The Parson's Tale: “And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest.”