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let sleeping dogs lie

verb

Etymology

Attestations exist from the 1820s and 1830s. Earlier ones may be discoverable with better corpus searches. The metaphor is self-evident and is typical of folk wisdom. To choose to pass by a sleeping dog without stirring it is comparable to letting a hornets' nest or beehive be, not poking a bear, and so on.

Definitions

  1. To leave things as they are

    To leave things as they are; especially, to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument; to leave disagreements in the past.

    • Near-synonyms: let it be, leave it be, let things be, leave things be, let it alone, leave it alone, let things alone, leave things alone; let bygones be bygones, let nature take its course
    • Eventually, they decided it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie and not discuss the matter any further.
    • A: I noticed a minor typo in the proofs just now, but I think they're already doing the make-ready on the press. B: Time to let sleeping dogs lie then.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for let sleeping dogs lie. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA