- English translation
A stone that keeps rolling is bound to take a knock sooner or later.
- Literal wording
The roaming stone, there is no avoiding a blow for it.
- Meaning and lesson
Someone who keeps generating commotion and disorder cannot expect to escape untouched indefinitely. The saying holds that such a person will, on some day yet to come, be struck by harm, and it treats that outcome as certain rather than merely possible.
The picture is of a stone that never stops turning and rolling about. Because it is always in motion, it must eventually knock against something. In the same way, ceaseless agitation and uproar make being hit only a matter of time.
- When it is used
Suited to someone who is constantly stirring up noise, uproar, and disorder, as a warning or prediction that such a person will not stay untouched and will one day be struck by some harm.
- Register
- colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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