Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

let sleeping dogs lie

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.21 in modern English

Syllables: let sleep-ing -dogs lie
IPA

23

Scrabble Score

18

Letters

3

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

verb

To leave things as they are; especially, to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument; to leave disagreements in the past.

Example Sentences

"Near-synonyms: let it be, leave it be, let things be, leave things be, let it alone, leave it alone, let things alone, leave things alone; let bygones be bygones, let nature take its course"
"Eventually, they decided it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie and not discuss the matter any further."
"A: I noticed a minor typo in the proofs just now, but I think they're already doing the make-ready on the press. B: Time to let sleeping dogs lie then."
"But, leaving novelists alone, on the whole we find in real life that if speech is silvern, silence is essentially golden, and that more harm is done by saying too much than by saying too little; above all, that infinite mischief arises by not letting sleeping dogs lie."
"Sometimes you just had to let stuff go. Endlessly rehashing old hurts just made things worse. It was far better, I'd learned, to let sleeping dogs lie."
"Crystal might have said that those perfect lips were zipped, but the kidnappers had no way of knowing that. Should he let sleeping dogs lie?"

Etymology

Attestations exist from the 1820s and 1830s. Earlier ones may be discoverable with better corpus searches. The metaphor is self-evident and is typical of folk wisdom. To choose to pass by a sleeping dog without stirring it is comparable to letting a hornets' nest or beehive be, not poking a bear, and so on.

Inflected Forms

lets sleeping dogs lie (present, singular) letting sleeping dogs lie (participle, present)

Phrases

dog sleep lie doggo agree to disagree benign neglect hands off sleeping giant

Frequently Paired Words

dogsleep dog sleep lie doggo agree to disagree benign neglect hands off sleeping giant let a sleeping dog lie

Synonyms

let it be leave it be let things be leave things be let it alone leave it alone let things alone leave things alone let bygones be bygones let nature take its course

Questions

What does let sleeping dogs lie mean?: To leave things as they are; especially, to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument; to leave disagreements in the past.
Where does let sleeping dogs lie come from?: Attestations exist from the 1820s and 1830s. Earlier ones may be discoverable with better corpus searches. The metaphor is self-evident and is typical of folk wisdom. To choose to pass by a sleeping dog without stirring it is comparable to letting a hornets' nest or beehive be, not poking a bear, and so on.

How to pronounce let sleeping dogs lie

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “let sleeping dogs lie”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “let sleeping dogs lie”.
Repeat and practice — Say “let sleeping dogs lie” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.