murder will out
English
editEtymology
editThe phrase murder will out, literally "murder will become public", appears as far back as Geoffrey Chaucer's works. The phrase is often linked to the superstition that a murderer's presence near the corpse will be indicated by fresh bleeding.
Proverb
edit- A murderer will always be discovered.
- (idiomatic) Secrets or hidden crimes will eventually be exposed or discovered; nothing that is secret can remain a secret forever.
Related terms
editTranslations
editproverb
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References
edit- “murder will out”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from E. D. Hirsch Jr.; Joseph F. Kett; James Trefil, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2002, →ISBN.
- “murder”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.
- "English Legal Proverbs", Donald F. Bond, PMLA, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Dec., 1936), pp. 927.