it never rains but it pours
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Also seen as: it never rains but that it pours
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It never rains but it pours for Gloucester.
But, as ever, it never rains but it pours and typically I had to say ' no ' to that in order to do Brian May's gig.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “it never rains but it pours” mean?
Multiple bad things happen at the same time Literally: rain pouring down
Is “it never rains but it pours” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
What is the closest equivalent?
“hoạ vô đơn chí” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.