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Still waters run deep

  1. A person's calm exterior often conceals great depths of character, just as the deepest streams can have the smoothest surfaces.


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Idioms and Phrases

A quiet person may be very profound, as in Susie rarely says much, but still waters run deep . The physical observation in this term dates from ancient times, but it has been used figuratively since about 1400. Anthony Trollope amplified it in He Knew He Was Right (1869): “That's what I call still water. She runs deep enough. . . . So quiet, but so—clever.”
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Example Sentences

She is one of those characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters run deep."

"Still waters run deep," they said, and all those to whom they said it nodded in a wise acquiescence.

Still waters run deep, say the English, and the Italians, Still waters ruin bridges.

Yes, and there is another old proverb and one much more to the purpose that says, “Still waters run deep.”

We sometimes hear it said of a person who is very quiet and does not speak much that "still waters run deep."

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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