- English translation
To hell with a golden basin if it's only there for me to throw up blood in.
- Literal wording
May the golden basin that I vomit blood into be cut off.
- Meaning and lesson
The speaker curses a splendid object, wishing it gone; the opening verb is an imprecation, not an instruction to cut the basin. Vomiting blood into it signals grave illness or ruin, not a minor complaint, and the costly vessel does nothing to ease that suffering. Honor arriving together with such harm is worthless.
More broadly, the saying rejects gilded misfortune: gifts, privileges, or prestige bundled with one's own destruction. The speaker would rather lose the luxury entirely than accept it as the elegant setting for their ruin. Its spelling follows colloquial pronunciation, so the word for gold appears as dahab.
- When it is used
Use this when someone is offered something attractive, such as a reward, post, or lavish treatment, that carries a ruinous cost. It insists that the price outweighs the glitter. Because it is phrased as a curse, it sounds bitter and emphatic rather than polite.
- Register
- colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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