Meaning
The person or problem that complains loudest is the one that gets attention, help, or resources; making noise is what produces results. It is quoted either as advice to speak up about a problem or, cynically, as an explanation for why quiet and patient parties get overlooked. American in origin and flavor. Informal and proverb-like; can sound like practical advice or like world-weary cynicism depending on the speaker. Regional use: American English.
Origin
An American aphorism whose origin is murky. Tradition credits the humorist Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) with an 1870 poem, 'The Kicker', containing the lines about the wheel that squeaks the loudest getting the grease, but the Yale Book of Quotations notes that the poem's existence 'has never been verified', and Quote Investigator's research found the attribution unsupported, possibly a confusion with Cal Stewart's fictional 'Josh Weathersby'. The earliest solid evidence Quote Investigator located is from 1903, in Stewart's collection of Uncle Josh stories ('the wheel what squeaks the loudest is the one what gets the grease'), with newspaper appearances following from 1910. Earlier kindred sayings pointed the opposite moral: Franklin's Poor Richard (1737) observed that the worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations spread the Billings attribution in 1937. The famous Japanese counterpart also reverses the lesson: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease
- the squeakiest wheel gets the grease
- the squeaky wheel gets the oil
- the wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the grease
Usage Examples
- Email the landlord again tomorrow; the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
- In this office the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so the quiet departments always lose out at budget time.
- She would rather suffer in silence than complain, but her sister firmly believes that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.