- English translation
A household full of daughters is, in time, a house with their places left empty.
- Literal wording
Girls: their tethering place is empty.
- Meaning and lesson
In this traditional saying, daughters’ places in the parental household are regarded as vacant in advance of a later change. Their presence is presented as temporary rather than as a permanent fullness of the home.
The change assumed is marriage and departure from the parents’ home: however many daughters are there now, their places are imagined as destined to be unoccupied. Its tethering-place image can sound objectifying and should not be read as endorsing that view or this gendered expectation.
- When it is used
Used in discussions of daughters where marriage and leaving the parental home are assumed to be inevitable. It expresses a traditional expectation that their residence with their parents is temporary, not a statement endorsing that expectation or the proverb’s objectifying animal-tether image.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
Report an issue with this meaning: A household full of daughters is, in time, a house with their places left empty.