Meaning
A warning that children are listening - spoken over their heads, or muttered afterwards in the kitchen. The proverb reminds adults that the small audience at knee height hears everything worth hearing, and repeats most of it. Spoken-parent register, usually comic; nearly always said in the third person while the pitcher in question looks innocent. Regional use: General English; proverb from 1546.
Origin
The pun is medieval: the handles of pitchers were called ears, so a little pitcher genuinely had big ears - and so, fatally, did the little pitcher standing beside the table. John Heywood printed the warning in his 1546 collection of English proverbs, in the old spelling: Auoyd your children, smal pitchers haue wide eares. Charlotte Yonge's novel Abbeychurch (1844) proves it already odious to Victorian children, her heroine caught eavesdropping and scolded with the proverb in its long-eared variant; Time magazine made it a merchandising truism in 1939, a caution to parents and a joy to radio advertising alike; and Stephen King's memoir of 2000 shows the principle still governing what children absorb and never repeat. The Phrase Finder's gloss is the standing one: be careful, children are listening.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- little pitchers
- little pitchers have long ears
- small pitchers have wide ears
Usage Examples
- The estate agent praised the garden while the little pitcher announced, accurately, where the bodies were buried.
- Little pitchers have big ears, the nurse reminded the registrar, right as the little pitcher asked what jaundice meant.
- Half the village's gossip column is audible only knee-high to a grasshopper, where the pitchers live.