Meaning
People who have glaring faults or vulnerabilities of their own should not attack others, since any retaliation would expose or ruin them; in practice it is a rebuke to hypocrisy, telling a critic that they are in no position to judge. Familiar, mildly reproachful register; usually addressed to a hypocrite, often shortened to 'glass houses'. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image is old. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385) already quotes a proverb about a man with 'an hed of verre' (a head of glass) who should beware the casting of stones, and the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs records Stephen Gosson's Ephemerides of Phialo (1579) as saying that he who lives in a glass house should never begin throwing stones, already calling it a Spanish proverb. George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs (1640) gives 'Whose house is of glasse, must not throw stones at another'. Thomas Paine likewise called it Spanish in the Pennsylvania Packet (1778), and Benjamin Franklin recast it as 'Don't throw stones at your neighbors, if your own windows are glass'. The now-standard wording, 'those who live in glass houses should not throw stones', was current by the time of Trollope's Framley Parsonage (1861).
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- don't throw stones if you live in a glass house
- people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
- those in glass houses should not throw stones
- those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
Usage Examples
- Before you mock his spelling in the group chat, remember that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
- The columnist who criticised everyone's ethics was reminded that those in glass houses should not throw stones.
- You missed two deadlines yourself last month, so perhaps folks in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.