Talk:let sleeping dogs lie

There's a request for an origin on this, and it seems wiki.answers has at least some cursory information. "To let a matter or person which at the present is at rest stay at rest, rather than to create a disturbance by bringing the matter up again or arousing the person. Chaucer wrote this in just the reverse form -- 'It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.' ('Troylus and Crisedye,' 1374) -- and it was still so recorded some two hundred years later by John Heywood ('A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes,' 1592), 'It is ill wakyng of a sleapyng dogge.' But by the time of Charles Dickens ('David Copperfield, 1850) it had been turned about into the order of today's usage." From "Heavens to Betsy!" by Charles Earle Funk (Harper & Row, New York, 1955)."


 * I couldn't find any usage of sleeping dogs lie before 1820, but it is soon referred to as an old proverb, as the earlier form seems to be remembered as the modern form. DCDuring TALK 13:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Atkinson quote should be removed
Back in January, I tried to remove the 2019 Atkinson quote that Kiwima had just added because it didn't really contain enough context to successfully convey the meaning of the phrase (which should always be the goal of an example quotation [unless it is significant for some other reason, like a first appearance in print]), but Kiwima quickly reverted me. Looking at this again two months later, I still maintain that that quote is a poor example, since it seems to simply use the phrase without effectively illustrating the meaning of it. Note that I have since added another quotation, also from the 2010s, that is much more illustrative. Thus, in my view, the Atkinson quote now really has no reason to be here (and on the Citations page). I won't remove it again, but I call on others watching this page to express here their consent (or objection) to its removal. - dcljr (talk) 00:07, 13 March 2020 (UTC)