YVONNE'S TAKE: The pot calling kettle black

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the endurance of certain phrases in the English language. The kind of words that travel across centuries and cultures, yet still manage to hold our attention. One of them is this: the pot calling the kettle black.

Its earliest trace can be found as far back as 1546, in John Heywood’s Proverbs, where he wrote: “The pot calls the kettle blacke, but both are blacke at length.” Even then, the imagery was clear: two objects, both darkened by fire, pointing at each other in accusation.

The saying resurfaced in Cervantes’ Don Quixote in 1620, translated into English by Thomas Shelton. By the late 17th century, it was firmly part of the English language, appearing in the writings of William Penn, who cautioned, “For the pot to call the kettle black.”

But its story doesn’t start there. Go further back, and you’ll find Aesop’s fables, where a snake scolds a crab for walking crooked, even though both are shaped the same. Humanity, it seems, has always found ways to laugh at, or lament, the sight of one flawed vessel mocking another.

Even kitchen humour kept it alive: James Howell in 1659, when he spoke of the frying pan vs the kettle.

Centuries on, the soot and smoke of open-fire cooking gave us a metaphor that refuses to die.

Perhaps it endures because hypocrisy endures. Because, centuries later, we still live in a world where institutions accuse each other of the very faults they embody, where leaders condemn in others the same failings that shadow their own record.

The pot and the kettle may have been iron once, blackened by soot. Today, they are dressed in suits, seated in chambers, speaking at podiums. But the story is the same.

So when you hear the phrase today, the pot calling the kettle black, remember that it carries with it not just the smoke of history, but also the mirror it holds up to our present. Some phrases fade with time... but in Kenya, this one, it seems, never will.