- English translation
Words dinned into someone's ears, again and again, work more powerfully than magic.
- Literal wording
Resounding on the ears is more potent than sorcery.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying claims that urging a person over and over, keeping the same words sounding in their ears, has a stronger hold on them than any sorcery could; sorcery serves only as a yardstick of strength, not a literal claim about magic. Its force lies in persistence rather than in the strength of any single statement.
The effect it describes is a change of mind: steady, repeated enticement can turn a person's thinking and move them to adopt a view or course of action they would not otherwise have taken.
- When it is used
Suitable when someone's opinion or decision has shifted because another person kept pressing the same point on them repeatedly, to explain that sustained urging, not one convincing remark, brought about the change.
- Register
- Colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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