Birds of a feather flock together is an English proverb. The meaning is that beings (typically humans) of similar type, interest, personality, character, or other distinctive attribute tend to mutually associate. The first known written instance of metaphorical use of the flocking behavior of birds is found in the second century BC, where Ben Sira uses it in his apocryphal Biblical Book of Sirach, written about 180âÂÂ175 BC. This was translated into Greek sometime after 117 BC (probably), and it is this Greek version that has commonly been used, even in the Septuagint used by diaspora Jews. Although the Book of Sirach is not included in the Hebrew Bible, and therefore not considered scripture in Judaism, it is included in the Septuagint and the Old Testament of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In the Protestant traditions, historically, and still in continuation today in Lutheranism and Anglicanism, the Book of Sirach is an intertestamental text found in the Apocrypha, though it is regarded as noncanonical. Richard Challoner's 1752 version of the DouayâÂÂRheims Bible translates this phrase in Sirach as
The idiom is sometimes spoken or written as an anapodoton, where only the first part ("Birds of a feather") is given and the second part ("...flock together") is implied, as, for example "The whole lot of them are ; well, birds of a feather, you know" (this requires the reader or listener to be familiar with the idiom).
In nature, birds of the same species in flight often form homogeneous groups for various reasons, such as to defend against predators. This behavior of birds has been observed by people since time immemorial, and is the source of the idiom ("of a feather" means "of the same plumage," that is, of the same species).
The first known written instance of metaphorical use of the flocking behavior of birds is found in the second century BC, where Ben Sira uses it in his apocryphal Biblical Book of Sirach, written about 180âÂÂ175 BC. This was translated into Greek sometime after 117 BC (probably), and it is this Greek version that has commonly been used, even in the Septuagint used by diaspora Jews.
Verse 27:9 of this Greek version of Sira's Hebrew original is
Richard Challoner's 1752 version of the DouayâÂÂRheims Bible translates this as
Other renderings give "Birds roost with their own kind, so honesty comes home to those who practice it" (New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, 1989), "Birds nest with their own kind, and honesty comes to those who work at it" (New American Bible Revised Edition, 2011), and so forth.
The first known use of the idiom in original English writing is 1545, when William Turner used a version of it in his anti-Catholic satire "The Rescuing of the Papist Fox":
Which may be rendered in 21st century English as
John Minsheu's The Dictionarie in Spanish and English (1599) has "Birdes of a feather will flocke togither". Philemon Holland's 1600 translation of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita Libri has "As commonly birds of a feather will flye together", while Dryden's 1697 translation The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Aeneis ascribes flocking behavior to humans: "What place the gods for our repose assigned / Friends daily flock..."
Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato's 360 BC Republic, published in 1856 and in use since, has "Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says".
Plato's original is:
Jowett gives this as:
However, Jowett here is taking a liberty in rendering Plato's phrase into idiomatic English of his time; the Greek original has nothing about birds, and it is not known what "old proverb" is referred to. But as Jowett was long the standard translation (and is still sometimes used), generations of students learned (wrongly) that the idiom was current in classical Athens. Later translations dispense with the bird reference, hewing more closely to the original text; Allan Bloom's 1968 translation of the passage, for instance has "By Zeus, I shall tell you just how it looks to me, Socrates, he said. Some of us who are about the same age often meet together and keep up the old proverb."
But Jowett's work was quite influential and respected in his time and after and his translation of Plato was the standard for about a century and is still used, putting the proverb in the mouth of a character (Cephalus) to be read by generations of students and scholars.
The idiom appears occasionally in the literary canon, both in English and translations from other languages.
Swift's poem "A Conference, Between Sir Harry Pierce's Chariot, And Mrs. D. Stopford's Chair" (c. 1710) has "And since we're so near, like birds of a feather / Let's e'en, as they say, set our horses together", while Anthony Trollope in The Prime Minister (1876) has "'They're birds of a feather,' said Lopez. 'Birds of a feather do fall out sometimes'...", and James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) has "I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together." Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869, first translated into English in 1899) has "...so that birds of a feather may fight together" (that is, on the same side). (A Russian proverb with similar meaning is þôýþóþ ÿþûàÃÂóþôà("berries from the same field")
Many cultures have similar sayings which, although not necessarily mentioning birds, may be idiomatically translated as "birds of a feather flock together".