- English translation
He has missed out on half of what life has to offer.
- Literal wording
Half his life has passed him by.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying describes a person who has let something of great worth slip away. By likening the missed thing to half of one's lifetime, it turns an ordinary absence or lost chance into a loss of enormous size. Its wording keeps the colloquial نُص, which stands for the classical نصف (half).
Its force comes from hyperbole: the speaker does not count real years but signals that what was missed was so valuable that being without it shrinks a life. It judges the scale of the loss rather than its cause.
- When it is used
Say it of someone who has missed out on something substantial, such as an occasion, opportunity, or experience, to stress how large the loss is. The exaggeration carries the point, so it suits remarks about what a person missed rather than literal statements about time.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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