murder will out
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
The 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[edit]
Translations[edit]
proverb
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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.