--- let bygones be bygones
to forget about the past
TRANSLATION
let bygones be bygones = die Vergangenheit ruhen lassen --- GOOGLE INDEX let bygones be bygones: approximately 7,500,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Israel and Turkey LET BYGONES BE BYGONES
(Washington Post headline)
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General Motors and Ford Motor Company(NYSE:F) have decided to LET BYGONES BE BYGONES and come together to develop a new generation of fuel-efficient automatic transmissions.
(Cogo News)
(Washington Post headline)
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General Motors and Ford Motor Company(NYSE:F) have decided to LET BYGONES BE BYGONES and come together to develop a new generation of fuel-efficient automatic transmissions.
(Cogo News)
Did you
know?
let bygones be bygones
idiom
- forget past offences or causes of conflict and be reconciled
(Oxford English Dictionaries)
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When the adjective and noun "bygone" first appeared in the 16th century, it simply referred to the past. In The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickelby for instance, Charles Dickens writes:
"At this time, nothing appeared to interest him so much as visiting those places which had been most familiar to his friend in bygone days."
The construction is very simple. A bygone is simply a thing that has "gone by." Dickens could have written "in the past" instead of "in bygone days."
Over time however, the plural "bygones" came to refer specifically to unpleasant events in the past, such as a conflict, a quarrel or maybe even a crime. As the Phrase Finder tells us, Scottish churchman Samuel Rutherford used the phrase in a letter during his detention in Aberdeen in 1636 in which he regrets some of the things he did during his youth.
He essentially asks God for forgiveness: "Pray that bygones betwixt me and my Lord may be bygones." (Betwixt is an archaic, Old English word for between).
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SYNONYMS
let sleeping dogs lie, forget and forgive, bury the hatchet, kiss and make up, let pass
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Ever since we decided to let bygones be bygones, we've become great friends."
idiom
- forget past offences or causes of conflict and be reconciled
(Oxford English Dictionaries)
---
When the adjective and noun "bygone" first appeared in the 16th century, it simply referred to the past. In The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickelby for instance, Charles Dickens writes:
"At this time, nothing appeared to interest him so much as visiting those places which had been most familiar to his friend in bygone days."
The construction is very simple. A bygone is simply a thing that has "gone by." Dickens could have written "in the past" instead of "in bygone days."
Over time however, the plural "bygones" came to refer specifically to unpleasant events in the past, such as a conflict, a quarrel or maybe even a crime. As the Phrase Finder tells us, Scottish churchman Samuel Rutherford used the phrase in a letter during his detention in Aberdeen in 1636 in which he regrets some of the things he did during his youth.
He essentially asks God for forgiveness: "Pray that bygones betwixt me and my Lord may be bygones." (Betwixt is an archaic, Old English word for between).
---
SYNONYMS
let sleeping dogs lie, forget and forgive, bury the hatchet, kiss and make up, let pass
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Ever since we decided to let bygones be bygones, we've become great friends."
