"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is a 17th-century proverb that means without time off from work, a person becomes both bored and boring. It is often shortened to "all work and no play".[1] It was newly popularized after the phrase was featured in the 1980 horror film, The Shining.[2]
History
Though the spirit of the proverb had been expressed previously, the modern saying first appeared in writing in Welsh writer and historian James Howell's Proverbs (1659).[3][4][5] It has often been included in subsequent collections of proverbs and sayings.[6]
Some writers have added a second part to the proverb, as in Harry and Lucy Concluded (1825) by the Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth:
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.
See also
- Overwork
- Work–life balance
- 996 working hour system
- 007 working hour system
References
- All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Dictionary.com, retrieved 2023-11-24^
- Paul Miers. The Black Maria Rides Again: Being a Reflection on the Present State of American Film with Special Respect to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining MLN, 1980^
- It is found on page 12 of the section titled Proverbs, or Old Sayed-Sawes, and Adages in the English Toung. Howell's Proverbs is bound with Howell's Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660). James Howell. Paroimiographia. Proverbs, or, old Sayed Sawes & Adages in English (or the Saxon Toung) Italian, French and Spanish whereunto the British, for their great antiquity and weight are added Samuel Thomson, 1659^
- James Howell. Lexicon Tetraglotton, an English-French-Italian-Spanish Dictionary Samuel Thomson, 1660^
- work, n. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2023-03-02, retrieved 2023-11-24^
- James Howell Quotes and Quotations Famous Quotes and Authors.com, retrieved 2011-01-21^