- English translation
A mother-in-law is a wasting fever, but a husband's sister is a scorpion whose sting no spell can cure.
- Literal wording
The mother-in-law is a fever, and the husband's sister is a deaf scorpion.
- Meaning and lesson
This traditional complaint, voiced from a wife's perspective, ranks the trials she may face from her husband's female relatives. His mother is likened to a fever: a draining, persistent illness that wears a person down through constant discomfort rather than a single dramatic blow.
His sister is cast as something worse: a 'deaf' scorpion, meaning not one that cannot hear but one whose venom no charm can subdue. Her hostility is pictured as sharp, deliberate and incurable. The contrast suggests the sister-in-law's malice may wound more deeply than the mother-in-law's chronic nagging.
- When it is used
Fits a wife's rueful or joking complaint about friction with her husband's mother and sister, or talk about the strains of marrying into a household. It voices a stereotype of hostile female in-laws, not a neutral truth about families, so it suits sympathetic company rather than remarks in-laws might overhear.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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