Meaning
Troubles rarely arrive singly: when one misfortune comes, others follow at once. It is occasionally said of good things arriving all at once, though the negative use dominates. The older full wording now sounds slightly British or old-fashioned, and the shortened American form 'when it rains, it pours' is at least as common today. Neutral register, typically wry or fatalistic in tone; usually said of a run of bad luck. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A proverb of unknown ultimate origin, in use since the early 18th century. Its earliest known record is the title of a satirical pamphlet of 1726, 'It Cannot Rain but It Pours; or, London Strew'd with Rarities', mocking the Mary Toft rabbit-birth hoax. The pamphlet is usually credited to Queen Anne's physician John Arbuthnot, but Jonathan Swift has also been proposed, and Dictionary.com lists both candidates without deciding between them; no letter has been shown to be involved. The odd grammar preserves an older sense of 'but' meaning 'except that', so the sentence reads literally 'it never rains without pouring'. The reworked short form 'When it rains, it pours' was made famous as the Morton Salt advertising slogan launched in 1911-14.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- It cannot rain but it pours
- It never rains without pouring
- When it rains, it pours
Usage Examples
- First the furnace failed, then the pipes burst - it never rains but it pours.
- It never rains but it pours for the airline this week: a strike, a booking-system outage and now a fuel dispute.
- As if losing the contract were not enough, two senior designers resigned the same Friday; it never rains but it pours.