The pot calling the kettle black: meaning & origin (1620)

The pot calling the kettle black

Accusing someone of a fault that you are guilty of yourself; hypocritical criticism in which the accuser shares the very flaw being condemned.

“A politician who dodged his own taxes calling others cheats is the pot calling the kettle black.”

First recorded 1620 · Thomas Shelton, trans., The History of Don-Quichote (Part 2), London, 1620 — English translation of Cervantes ↓

The popular story

The usual account is pleasingly tidy. In old kitchens, so the story goes, both the pot and the kettle hung over the same open fire, and both turned black with soot on the outside. When one turned to the other and called it black, the insult rebounded instantly: the accuser was every bit as sooty. The phrase is therefore offered as a perfect little emblem of hypocrisy, built straight out of the hearth.

That much is sound. Where popular retellings wobble is in the dating. Some hand the phrase to William Shakespeare; others plant it vaguely in “medieval kitchens” or attribute it to a single clever author. The truth is both older in idea and more traceable in wording than the folklore suggests, and it arrives in English by a specific and documented route.

What the record shows

The reproach reaches English through translation. In 1620 Thomas Shelton published his version of the second part of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and there Sancho Panza is told he is like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, “Auant, black-browes.” Shelton was rendering a Spanish proverb — Dijo la sarten a la caldera: Quitate alla, ojinegra, roughly “the frying-pan said to the cauldron, get away, black-eyes.” So the earliest datable English form is not pot-to-kettle at all, but frying-pan-to-kettle, and the colour slur is directed at the other vessel’s black face.

A related native form appears soon after. John Clarke’s 1639 collection of proverbs, the Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina, records the blunt line The pot calls the pan burnt-arse — the same self-implicating joke, with a pot and a pan rather than a kettle.

The wording we now use settles later in the century. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, writes in Some Fruits of Solitude (1693): For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality, an Atheist against Idolatry, a Tyrant against Rebellion, or a Lyer against Forgery, and a Drunkard against Intemperance, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black. Here pot, kettle and black finally sit together in the familiar shape, and Penn frames it exactly as a warning against hypocritical reproach.

The verdict

This is an attested idiom. We can point to real, dated texts for each stage: Shelton’s 1620 Don Quixote for the self-accusing image in English, Clarke’s 1639 proverb book for a pot-and-pan variant, and Penn’s 1693 maxims for the standard pot-and-kettle wording. What we should not do is collapse all of this into a single origin. The phrase did not spring fully formed from one author; it migrated from a Spanish proverb, passed through a frying-pan and a pan, and only gradually hardened into the kettle version taught today.

The mechanism behind the image is worth dwelling on, because it is the whole point. Both pot and kettle blacken over the same open flame. The accusation is therefore self-implicating: to call the kettle black is to advertise one’s own soot. That symmetry is what makes the saying a tool against hypocrisy rather than mere name-calling — it is a charge that convicts the one who makes it.

What we don’t know

A few things stay genuinely open. We cannot name the person who first spoke the exact modern string aloud; Penn’s 1693 line is simply the first clear written instance, and proverbs usually circulate in speech before anyone sets them down. The precise path from Shelton’s frying-pan to Penn’s pot is not fully documented, and it is likely that several overlapping versions ran side by side for decades. Claims that tie the phrase to Shakespeare, or to a particular medieval cook, have no textual support and should be set aside.

Usage today

The idiom is now a standard charge of hypocrisy, used whenever someone condemns a fault they plainly share — the serial interrupter complaining that others talk over him, the chronically late friend scolding you for keeping her waiting. It sits alongside “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” and the biblical “first stone” in the same corner of the language.

One modern objection deserves a direct answer: today’s pots don’t blacken. Stainless steel and non-stick surfaces stay bright, so the literal picture no longer matches most kitchens. But this does not weaken the idiom in the slightest. Like “dialling” a phone with no dial, it has become a frozen metaphor — speakers reach for it fluently without ever visualising soot. The hearth that gave it birth has gone cold, yet the shape of the insult, and its neat habit of rebounding on the accuser, keep it very much alive.

Common questions

Where does "the pot calling the kettle black" come from?

The reproach enters English in Thomas Shelton's 1620 translation of the second part of Cervantes' Don Quixote, where a frying-pan tells a kettle "Auant, black-browes." It renders a Spanish proverb in which the frying-pan mocks the cauldron for being black-faced. The now-standard pot-and-kettle wording is first clearly recorded in William Penn's Some Fruits of Solitude in 1693.

Who first used the exact modern wording?

William Penn is the first recorded writer to put pot, kettle and "black" together in the familiar way, in Some Fruits of Solitude (1693): "for the Pot to call the Kettle black." Earlier English forms used a frying-pan and a kettle (1620) or a pot and a pan (1639).

Why pots and kettles specifically?

Both were cast-iron vessels hung over an open wood or coal fire, and both blackened with soot on the outside. That is the point of the image: the accuser is as sooty as the accused, so the charge condemns the one making it.

Does it still make sense now that pots don't blacken?

The literal basis has faded — modern stainless and non-stick cookware stays shiny — but the idiom survives as a frozen metaphor. Speakers use it for hypocritical criticism without picturing any soot at all, much as we "dial" a phone that has no dial.

Is it the same as the original Spanish proverb?

It is descended from it. Cervantes' line "Dijo la sarten a la caldera: Quitate alla, ojinegra" has a frying-pan taunting a cauldron for its black eyes. English kept the self-implicating structure but swapped in the pot and kettle familiar to its own hearths.

What does the idiom actually mean?

It describes hypocritical criticism: accusing someone of a fault that you plainly share. It belongs to a family of sayings — like "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" — that warn against condemning in others what is true of ourselves.