The pot calling the kettle black
An idiom for hypocrisy where the accuser shares the fault.
The pot calling the kettle black is a proverbial idiom describing a situation where someone accuses another of a fault that the accuser also possesses. It exemplifies psychological projection or hypocrisy and is often used in the tu quoque logical fallacy to deflect a claim of wrongdoing. English versions of the expression began appearing in the first half of the 17th century, with possible Spanish or ultimately Italian origins.
Quick Facts
- Collection by william penn
- Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims (1682)
Facts from the source article.
Origin
The idiom "the pot calling the kettle black" first appeared in Thomas Shelton's 1620 translation of Don Quixote. In that story, the servant Sancho Panza tells his master, "You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, 'Avant, black-browes'." The original Spanish line, Dijo la sartén a la caldera, Quítate allá ojinegra, means "Said the pan to the pot, get out of there black-eyes." The text calls it a proverb, used to retort against someone who criticizes another for a fault they clearly share. A version where the pan calls the pot culinegra, or "black-arse," highlights that both are blackened by the cooking fire. This translation soon appeared in England as "The pot calls the pan burnt-arse" in John Clarke's 1639 collection Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina. A wording closer to the modern one shows up in William Penn's 1682 book Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims. A later, different interpretation claims the pot is sooty from the fire while the kettle is shiny, so the pot sees its own reflection and accuses the kettle of a fault only the pot has. This idea is illustrated in an anonymous poem from an 1876 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine.
Similar themes in antiquity
The idea of someone criticizing another for a fault they share goes back to an ancient Greek drinking song from around the late 6th or early 5th century BCE, which used the phrase "the Snake and the Crab." A fable credited to Aesop tells of a mother crab who scolds her child for not walking straight, only for the child to ask her to show how it's done. Around 500 BCE, an Aramaic version of the Ahiqar story has a bramble asking a pomegranate tree why it has so many thorns, and the tree replies that the bramble itself is nothing but thorns. The Talmud warns against pointing out a flaw in someone else that you possess yourself, as in "a person stigmatizes another with his own blemish." The Bible's "Mote and the Beam" passage similarly criticizes those who focus on a minor fault in another while ignoring a much larger one in themselves.
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