Don't judge a book by its cover

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For a Desperate Housewives episode, see Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover.

The very common English idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" is a metaphorical phrase which means "don't determine the worth of something based on its appearance".[1] It is probably the most common expression used in English to convey this idea.[2]

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[edit] Origin

The phrase first appeared in 1929 in the American journal American Speech as "you can't judge a book by its binding."[3] In 1946 the phrase appeared in the murder mystery novel Murder in the Glass Room (by Edwin Rolfe and Lester Fuller) as "you can never tell a book by its cover."[4]

While the phrase itself may be born of the 20th century, the idea has existed much longer. In the introduction to François Rabelais's La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (written in the 16th century), he writes:

You, my good disciples—and other fools with too much time on their hands—reading the cheerful titles of some of my books, like Gargantua, Pantagruel, Guzzlepot, The High Importance of Codpieces, Peas in Lard (With Commentary), etc., can more easily perceive that they're not just about mocking and scoffing, full of silliness and pleasant lies—having seen, without having to look any harder, that their outer image (that is, their titles) is usually received with mocking laughter and jokes. But it's wrong to be so superficial when you're weighing men's work in the balance. Wouldn't you yourself say that the monk's robes hardly determine who the monk is? Or that there are some wearing monks' robes who, on the inside, couldn't be less monkish? Or that there are people wearing Spanish capes who, when it comes to courage, couldn't have less of the fearless Spanish in them? And that's why you have to actually open a book and carefully weigh what's written there.[5]

In the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the Roman author Juvenal wrote in Satires, "Fronti nulla fides," which translates as, "Never have faith in the front."[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] External reference

[edit] Reference

  1. ^ The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd ed. 2002.
  2. ^ discussion on an Internet forum
  3. ^ http://www.jstor.org/
  4. ^ The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 2004.
  5. ^ Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Translated by Burton Raffel.
  6. ^ FRONTI NULLA FIDES - Proverbes latins, citations et locutions latines - Abc-Lettres.com