- English translation
Squeeze yourself between an onion and its skin, and all you'll take away is the stink.
- Literal wording
O you who go in between the onion and its peel, nothing comes to you except its reek.
- Meaning and lesson
Whoever forces their way into something that does not concern them will come away with nothing worth having. The picture is of someone wedging into the thin gap between an onion and its peel, where the only reward is صنّة, the pungent, unpleasant smell left behind.
The saying serves as a caution against meddling. Its lesson is that intruding into other people's business tends to bring back something displeasing, so the wiser course is to keep out of matters where one has no place.
- When it is used
Use it to warn someone against poking into an affair that is not theirs, or afterward to someone whose interference brought them nothing but unpleasantness. It works as a pointed word of caution about minding one's own business.
- Register
- Colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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