English · Proverb Candidate

spare the rod and spoil the child

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Also seen as: spare the rod, spoil the child · spare the rod and you will spoil the child

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Failing to discipline a child can lead to bad behavior

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Không kỷ luật trẻ em có thể dẫn đến hành vi xấu

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: withholding physical punishment

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Indeed, the old adage: ‘ spare the rod and spoil the child’ has much wisdom.

And it's part of the Christian doctrine, you know, spare the rod and spoil the child.’

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.

Topics: Children

Common questions

What does “spare the rod and spoil the child” mean?

Failing to discipline a child can lead to bad behavior Literally: withholding physical punishment

Is “spare the rod and spoil the child” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.