"Spread softly, but sleep hard": meaning and examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

When a person wants to give a warning about someone, he says: "Look, he lays softly, but sleeps hard." Today we will analyze the meaning of the proverb, and also find out who prefers to prepare "uncomfortable beds" for the interlocutor.

Meaning

There is not much mystery here. The expression “Softly spreads, but hard to sleep” means that a person says something completely different from what he thinks. Rather, his speech has a subtext directly opposite to the content. And yet, one cannot do without an example.

Network marketing as an example

Every person while looking for a job one way or another ended up in offices, which are usually located in basements and other unpresentable places. These people are “employees of a large firm”, and they offer a trusting person to become their “business partner”. Many people know how it ends: first, newly minted “employees” are offered to purchase brochures for 100 rubles, and then more. And all because you can say about any representative of a network company: “He lays softly, but sleeps hard.”

Hiring when not telling the whole truth

Another less extreme and nasty example. When a person passes a job interview, the employer or his representative pours nightingales about what a good and successful company they have, what high requirements, big salary. But not a word is said about what this salary consists of, how it is formed. Not a word about staying late at work, about a despotic department head who will tyrannize a newly arrived employee. The representative of the company, in whatever rank he may be, "lays softly", but "sleep hard".

How to understand that a person is preparing an "uncomfortable bed"?

To understand whether a proverb is suitable or not to describe the situation in which a person has found himself, you need to think about three questions:

1. Are the prospects too bright and cloudless.
2. How well a person knows the one who gives him information.
3. And does the one who speaks to him have a vested interest in agreeing to the venture.

After answering these simple questions, you can understand what situation a person is in and how desperate it is. A friend will not prepare a "hard bed". It is of no use to him. Although it all depends on the "quality" of the friend.

Be especially careful when it comes to financial and material issues.

The tone of the expression

The examples show that the tone of the expression is negative. It would never occur to anyone to praise like this. Because the proverb“Softly spreads, but hard to sleep” speaks of a person’s double-mindedness, which, of course, does not color him.