English Explanatory Dictionary

good wine needs no bush

English dictionary entry

Meanings

proverb
  1. There is no need to boast or advertise about something of good quality.

Word forms

good wine needs no bush

Etymology

First recorded in the epilogue to As You Like It by William Shakespeare: "If it be true, that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true, that a good play needes no Epilogue." Here, the term bush denotes a branch or bunch of ivy formerly hung as a vintner’s sign in front of a tavern.

Related words

old wine in a new bottle
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on G Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary