Meaning
A successful outcome can make earlier difficulties seem acceptable or unimportant. Often expresses relief, but it can minimise real harm; speakers sometimes use it cautiously or ironically. Regional use: Older English proverb fixed in early modern print; now international English.
Origin
The underlying proverb is medieval, and a fifteenth-century text already calls a related form old. John Heywood printed the recognisable 'all is well that endes well' in his 1546 English proverb collection, decades before Shakespeare made it a play title and used it within All's Well That Ends Well. Shakespeare amplified an inherited proverb; he did not coin it.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- All is well that ends well
- All was well that ended well
Usage Examples
- The train was late and the hotel misplaced our booking, but all's well that ends well.
- After the recovered files passed inspection, she decided that all was well that ended well.
- All's well that ends well, though the team should still review what went wrong.