English · Proverb Candidate

time and tide wait for no man

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Also seen as: time and tide tarry for no man

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

No one can stop the passage of time

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Không ai có thể ngăn chặn sự trôi qua của thời gian

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: ocean tides waiting for no one

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The drinking session that followed stretched until 4.00 am; the players disproving the theory that time and tide wait for no man.

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: Time Water

Common questions

What does “time and tide wait for no man” mean?

No one can stop the passage of time Literally: ocean tides waiting for no one

Is “time and tide wait for no man” formal or informal?

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

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