The English Language
Blood Is Thicker Than Water — Or Is It?
The old adage has a new interpretation.
Have we been duped?
Like myself, you probably have learned the familiar idiom “blood is thicker than water” to mean something like the following:
Merriam-Webster: “used to say that a person’s family is more important than a person’s other relationships or needs”
Collins: “people say ‘blood is thicker than water’ when they mean that their loyalty to their family is greater than their loyalty to anyone else”
Cambridge: “said to emphasize that you believe that family connections are always more important than other types of relationship”
Need I go on? Major dictionaries give us the same definition. And I think we all get the gist.
But is it true?
I stumbled across another Medium article in which the author discusses misquotes. He states that the actual saying is:
“the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,”
meaning the bonds made by choice are greater than those of family — the opposite of what we’ve always thought the phrase to mean.
