A watched pot never boils

We all know that feeling of being hungry and waiting for our dinner to cook, or waiting for the toast to pop up. If you stand and watch it, it will seem to take a very long time. If you go away and do something else, your food will be ready in no time. That’s the idea behind the proverb “a watched pot never boils”.

It means that time seems to pass more slowly when you’re waiting for something to happen. It can also suggest that you’re wasting your time if you’re just waiting — go and do something more productive instead.

This is one of the many proverbs first written down by the great American scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin, who loved wise words of this sort. Ironically, of course, Franklin, as a scientist, would have known that watching a pot of water has absolutely no effect on the time or energy it takes for the water to reach 100 degrees!

In our example dialogue, George not only uses the word “kettle” instead of “pot”, but he also omits the second half of the proverb — demonstrating very nicely how versatile these kinds of phrases are in everyday conversation.