Meaning
Family loyalty outweighs other bonds such as friendship, professional duty, or fairness to outsiders. Usually quoted to explain why someone sides with relatives even when impartiality or personal preference would point the other way. Neutral proverbial register; usually quoted to excuse or explain family favoritism. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The documented record is clear and comparatively recent. The earliest print appearance traced by The Phrase Finder is the Scots form Blude's thicker than water in Allan Ramsay's 1737 collection of Scots proverbs; etymonline independently notes the proverb in use by 1803 for family ties between people separated by distance, and Walter Scott carried it to a wide audience in Guy Mannering (1815). A claimed twelfth-century German analogue in the Reinhart Fuchs has not been verified and is doubted. A modern reversal - the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb - circulates as the supposed original meaning, but The Phrase Finder finds no historical basis for it: it is not biblical, and it was popularized only in the 1990s and 2000s by writers who cited no sources. The family-loyalty proverb is what the evidence supports.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- blood runs thicker than water
- blood's thicker than water
- blude's thicker than water
Usage Examples
- He hired his unqualified nephew anyway - blood is thicker than water, as the board soon discovered.
- When the dispute reached court, the family closed ranks; blood proved thicker than water.
- She had promised to stay neutral, but blood is thicker than water, and she voted with her sister.