no rest for the wicked
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
The wicked or evil will not be allowed to rest or have peace
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Những người xấu sẽ không được phép nghỉ ngơi hoặc có hòa bình
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
There was no rest for the wicked as John Gribbin told New Scientist's readers that the results of a Chinese study of the alignment of the planets meant we were in for years of terrible weather.
Well, I must go, no rest for the wicked.
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.
Common questions
What does “no rest for the wicked” mean?
The wicked or evil will not be allowed to rest or have peace
Is “no rest for the wicked” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.