Meaning
However damaging an event is, it will almost always bring someone a benefit; often said wryly by or about a person who profits from another's misfortune. The clipped form 'it's an ill wind' carries the same sense and usually sounds knowingly ironic. Proverbial and a little old-fashioned; used with dry humour, and it can sound tactless if the misfortune belongs to the listener. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The proverb was first printed in John Heywood's 1546 collection of English proverbs as 'An yll wynde that blowth no man to good, men saie' - wording that shows he was recording a saying already current rather than inventing one, and The Phrase Finder judges it probably predates 1546. The traditional explanation is nautical: in the age of sail a wind that kept one ship in port gave another a fair passage, so even a bad wind served somebody. Later writers played on it, notably Walter Scott, whose Rob Roy inverts it in Scots ('it's an ill wind blaws naebody gude'). The modern wording with 'any good' settled after the 16th century, and in 1947 the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty turned it into the orchestral joke that an oboe is the ill wind that nobody blows good.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- it's an ill wind
- it's an ill wind that blows no good
- it's an ill wind that blows no one any good
- it's an ill wind that blows nobody good
Usage Examples
- The depot closure was brutal for the town, though it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good - the haulage firms on the ring road took on forty drivers.
- It's an ill wind, as my grandmother used to say: the storm that wrecked the pier tripled our hotel bookings.
- He admitted the restructuring had handed him the promotion, remarking that it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.