English · Proverb Candidate

still waters run deep

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Also seen as: still water runs deep

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

A quiet person may have hidden depths or strengths

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Người im lặng có thể có những điểm mạnh hoặc chiều sâu ẩn

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: calm water is often deep

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

‘ Rapids might look more exciting, but still waters run deep,’ Jeff used to say to them.

It is said that ‘ still waters run deep’.

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: Water

Common questions

What does “still waters run deep” mean?

A quiet person may have hidden depths or strengths Literally: calm water is often deep

Is “still waters run deep” formal or informal?

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