A fish rots from the head down

Meaning

When an organization or state fails, it is the leadership that is the root cause.

Origin

This proverb is widely stated to have been coined in the late 17th century. It is claimed to have been used in John Josselyn’s An Account of Two Voyages to New-England, which was published in London in 1674. Having scanned the book, I can’t find any citation of the phrase, or anything like it. Perhaps I need to look again, but I have my doubts about that attribution.

Whatever the date of origin, many countries lay claim to it. I’ve seen sources that place it in China, Russia, Poland, England, Greece and so on…, but with no evidence of any sort to substantiate those claims. All of the early examples of the phrase in print prefer the ‘a fish stinks from the head down’ variant to ‘a fish rots from the head down’, which is more popular nowadays. Those early examples all ignore the nations mentioned above and credit the term to the Turks.

Sir James Porter’s Observations on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks, 1768, includes this:

The Turks have a homely proverb applied on such occasions: they say “the fish stinks first at the head”, meaning, that if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so.

The early date of this citation and the fact Porter was in a position to be authoritative on the Turkish custom, being as he was British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire for 15 years in the second half of the 18th century, gives Turkey a strong claim to be the birthplace of this proverb.

Of course, the proverb isn’t a lesson in piscine biology.

The phrase appears to have been used in Turkey in a metaphorical rather than literal sense from the outset. That’s just as well as, in reality, it is the guts of fish that rot and stink before the head.