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Arabic · Arabic scriptProverb: Verified

«لَا دُرَّهْ وَلَا سِلْفَهْ دِي دَاهْيَه مِخْتِلْفَهْ»

Meanings

Each meaning is reviewed on its own.

Meaning: Verified
English translation

She's no co-wife and no sister-in-law: she's a disaster in a class of her own.

Literal wording

Not a co-wife and not a husband's brother's wife; this one is a calamity of a different kind.

Meaning and lesson

The speaker measures someone against the two figures this traditional saying casts as sources of trouble for a married woman: a fellow wife in a polygynous household and the wife of her husband's brother. Having ruled out both labels, she declares the person something worse, a calamity whose harm exceeds anything those familiar rivals could inflict.

It targets a woman who sticks close to another for the purpose of hurting her. The point is not mere closeness but persistent, deliberate injury, so severe and varied that ordinary categories of domestic rivalry fail to describe it, leaving only the image of an extraordinary disaster.

When it is used

Said by a woman about another woman who keeps close to her and seems bent on harming her, within an extended-family setting. It sets the person beyond two familiar household rivals, suiting relentless, exceptional hostility rather than everyday friction. Applying it to men or non-domestic settings extends its described use.

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