Meaning
Just because something looks bright, attractive, or valuable on the outside does not mean it really is; outward show can conceal worthlessness. A warning against trusting appearances, especially where wealth, glamour, or polished surfaces are doing the talking. Glitters is the standard modern spelling of the proverb; glisters is the Folio-era word and marks a literary or pointedly allusive register. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean allusion).
Origin
The words are the Prince of Morocco's: in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596), Act 2 Scene 7, he opens the golden casket and reads a scroll beginning 'All that glisters is not gold' in the early editions (the MIT online text modernizes this to 'glitters'). The sentiment is much older than Shakespeare. Wikipedia traces it to a Latin proverb, non omne quod nitet aurum est, and to Alain de Lille in 1175; Chaucer has it twice, in The House of Fame (c. 1380), 'Hit is not al gold, that glareth', and in The Canon's Yeoman's Tale; it was proverbial in the 1500s, appearing in John Heywood's 1546 collection and, close to Shakespeare's wording, in John Florio's 1578 phrasebook. So the Shakespeare-coined claim fails: he gave the most famous form to an existing proverb. 'Glisters' later gave way to 'glitters', with Dryden's 1687 line an early dated example of the new form; Thomas Gray still wrote 'glisters' in 1747, and Tolkien famously inverted the saying in 1954.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- all that glistens is not gold
- not all that glitters is gold
Usage Examples
- The startup's glossy pitches and leased sports cars wowed investors, but all that glisters is not gold.
- She recalled that all that glisters is not gold when the bargain gold chain turned her wrist green.
- All that glisters is not gold: the hotel's shimmering brochure hid a cracked lobby and a dead lift.