- English translation
When the long-hungry finally eat their fill, their hearts swell with a fevered arrogance.
- Literal wording
Fullness after hunger breeds a burning in the heart.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying claims that comfort arriving abruptly after deprivation does not settle a person calmly. Instead, the newly satisfied heart becomes inflamed, not with grief or longing as the key word might elsewhere suggest, but with restless swagger, and the person loses the restraint that hardship once enforced. Fresh plenty, in this view, breeds insolence.
It works as a moral observation about upstarts: people who have only recently escaped poverty may flaunt their gains, forget their former humility, or behave with careless excess. The rhyme between hunger and inner heat, achieved by shifting a vowel purely for sound, makes the warning memorable and gives it the ring of common wisdom.
- When it is used
Used to remark on someone whose sudden prosperity, after years of want, has made them showy, overbearing, or reckless. It is a critical aside about character rather than a kindly observation, so it suits gossip, warning, or wry commentary more than direct address to the person concerned.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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