Meaning
Children speak truth or unexpected wisdom - usually at the worst possible moment, and usually with an accuracy adults have spent years learning to avoid. The phrase frames whatever follows as both innocent and devastating. Warm and quotational - it announces a story about to be told; usually shortened to the first four words, with and sucklings kept for the full scriptural effect. Regional use: General English; Biblical origin.
Origin
The words come straight from scripture. The King James Bible's Psalm 8:2 has it: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, and Jesus quotes the verse back to the temple authorities at Matthew 21:16 - have ye never read, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? - a line the Phrase Finder records as the phrase's whole source. English took the proverb and ran: Wiktionary notes the singular mouth of the Bible differing from the plural proverb, and the citations show the Victorian practice of playing on it - Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1859 wrote that out of the mouths of fools and cheats we may often get our truest lessons, Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill concluded in 1906 that out of the babes do we learn, and a New York Times critic complained in 1982 that from the babes will inevitably come everything spontaneous and pure.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- from the mouths of babes
- out of the mouth of babes
- out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
Usage Examples
- Out of the mouths of babes: asked what Daddy does all day, she said, meetings, mostly about biscuits.
- The four-year-old's audit of the nativity play - that donkey looks sad - outperformed every broadsheet critic.
- Out of the mouths of babes, the chairman repeated, slightly too gratefully, before quoting his daughter on the merger.