- English translation
When you have no choice but to go along with someone, keep up a polite pretense.
- Literal wording
Be hypocritically agreeable to the one with whom you cannot agree.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying counsels outward agreement when a person cannot avoid accommodating someone else. The compliance it describes is strategic rather than heartfelt, adopted because the situation leaves no practical alternative.
Its advice applies only where continued accommodation is unavoidable. If one can step away instead, the saying does not present false agreement as the preferred course or endorse insincere agreement in general.
- When it is used
Use it to describe reluctant, outward cooperation with someone whose demands cannot presently be avoided. It conveys a pragmatic choice to conceal disagreement while maintaining an unavoidable relationship or arrangement, rather than approval of insincerity as a general rule.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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