Meaning
Other people's circumstances or possessions seem more attractive than one's own, usually because they are seen only from a distance. Used both to describe chronic restlessness or envy and to caution that the imagined advantage may not survive a closer look. Neutral, conversational register, gently critical of envy or restlessness. Regional use: General English; modern form American in origin.
Origin
The sentiment is classical: Ovid's Latin line 'fertilior seges est alienis semper in agris', the crop is always richer in another man's field (Ars Amatoria, book I), is routinely cited as the ancient ancestor. The English proverb is much younger. The Phrase Finder classes it as an early twentieth-century saying and traces a metaphorical precursor to the New York Times of June 1853 ('a desire to see greener grass and set foot on fresher fields'), a figurative use from 1897 ('Grass is always greener, you know, further away', said of the Klondike gold fields) that presupposes the idea was already current, and the full modern form in the Kansas Farmer of February 1917: 'Some people are never satisfied anywhere. The grass always looks a little greener on the other side of the fence.' The proverb scholar Wolfgang Mieder later documented its American history in a 1993 Proverbium study of it as a proverb of discontent.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- The grass always looks greener on the other side
- The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence
- The grass is always greener where you water it
- The grass is greener on the other side
Usage Examples
- He kept switching departments, convinced the grass was greener on the other side, until he had worked on every floor of the building.
- Maya reminded herself that the grass always looks greener on the other side whenever her sister's schedule seemed easier.
- The grass is always greener on the other side until you are the one who has to mow it.