WALK THE WALK

THE MEANING of this phrase is an expression meaning one should believe in action rather than just empty boasting.

Usually used in full phrase talk the talk and walk the walk. Former reflects more practicality, unlike talk the talk which means no action only talking.

For example: If you going to talk the talk you need to walk the walk because only talk is just useless.

If you say that someone talks the talk but does not walk the walk, you mean that they do not act in a way that agrees with the things they say:

When it comes to recycling, he talks the talk but he doesn’t walk the walk.

The phrase became popular in 20 century, by replacing many old American proverbs, which were meant to prove that ‘talk is cheap’.

The origin of the phrase can also be traced in Benjamin Franklin’s proverb, “Well done is better than well said.”

In UK, this phrase could not gain much popularity and ended up by metamorphosing itself into a newest form walk the talk. It means one should back up the talk by following necessary actions. It seems that this might have been derived from mishearing the original American phrase.

Although playwrights like Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw had also suggested that talking is just unproductive if not followed by actions.

In play Richard III (1594), Shakespeare had written about a character, The First Murderer, who was hard to mess with: “Talkers are no good doers: be assured, we come to use hands and not our tongues.”

Similarly, Shaw in the drama titled Man and Superman, 1903, mentioned, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”