- English translation
A kite vouching for a crow? Then both of them will fly away.
- Literal wording
A kite stood surety for a crow; someone said: the pair of them will fly off.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying ridicules a pledge in which one slippery party vouches for another. The kite here is the bird of prey. A guarantor is supposed to stay put and answer for the other person, but if both are free to take wing, the promise secures nothing at all.
The unnamed speaker's remark reads as a bystander's wry comment, not the words of either bird. It mocks arrangements in which trust rests on people of the same unreliable kind: when a known runaway backs another, both are likely to disappear together.
- When it is used
Use it to mock a guarantee offered by someone just as unreliable or likely to vanish as the person being vouched for, for example when one debtor guarantees another debtor's loan.
- Register
- colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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