Every week I will be posting a proverb, idiom or phrase which is commonly used in Britain. Some will be strange, some will have interesting stories behind them, but all will be useful in understanding conversational English.
Here's your first proverb: The pen is mightier than the sword.
In seventeenth-century England, the government prohibited free speech in newspapers. If you spoke ill of the government, you were punished, but people continued to publish their disagreeable ideas. The original meaning of this expression is that written ideas can't be stopped by physical punishment. However, today, this expression is mainly used to mean that written ideas are more persuasive than violence.
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