straw in the wind
straw in the wind (idiom)
/ˌstrɔː ɪn ðə ˈwɪnd/
Meaning
- A small sign or hint that something is about to happen.
- A slight sign of how things could turn out.
- A quiet clue that change is coming.
- The old habit of tossing a bit of straw in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.
Synonyms: hint, sign, clue, indication, omen, portent, harbinger, foreshadowing.
Example Sentences
- The empty tables on a Friday night were a straw in the wind that the restaurant’s busy season was fading.
- When Mike started missing the morning meetings, Sarah took it as a straw in the wind that he might leave.
- A few late deliveries and short-tempered emails were straws in the wind of a much bigger problem at the office.
- That one careful remark from the minister was a straw in the wind that new rules were coming.
Etymology and Origin
A Light Thing That Tells a Larger Story
The phrase straw in the wind comes from something people actually used to do. They would pick up a dry stalk or a blade of grass and toss it into the air. A stone dropped straight down and told them nothing. The straw drifted, and that drift showed which way the wind was moving. From that small countryside test grew a way of talking about tiny signs that hint at something bigger on the way.
England as the First Home of the Idea
The picture belongs first to English speech. Farmers, sailors, and later writers in England reached for straw because it was light enough to move with the air. The same thought later crossed the Atlantic and settled into American writing as well, but the early life of the idea is English.
Shakespeare and the Grass Test
A close relative of the image turns up in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 1590s and printed in 1600. Salarino says he would still be “plucking the grass to know where sits the wind.” He is not using the later set phrase, but the action is the same. He lifts something light so the air, not guesswork, can show him which way things are heading.
Selden and the Printed Turning Point
The line most people come back to belongs to the English jurist John Selden. His remarks were gathered while he was alive and first printed in 1689 as Table-Talk. Speaking of libels, he wrote:
“Though some make slight of libels, yet you may see by them how the wind sits. As take a straw and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels.”
Selden’s point still feels fresh. Official papers can look heavy and sure of themselves. A cheap ballad or a scrap of gossip, like a straw, rides the real current of public feeling.
From Proverb to Set Phrase
By the middle of the seventeenth century people were already saying that a straw shows which way the wind blows. Lord Byron later picked up the same picture in Don Juan, writing that if you fling up a straw it will show the way the wind blows. The neat idiom straw in the wind, used as a name for a slight hint of what may come, took longer to settle. A clear example appears in Jack London’s John Barleycorn, published in 1913:
“There were little hints then that I did not take, little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I did not realize.”
From that time on the phrase turns up in politics, business, and ordinary talk whenever a small fact seems to announce a larger shift.
Why a Straw and Not a Stone
Selden’s contrast still explains the phrase. A stone falls straight. A straw rides the air. The idiom treats a weak or even trivial event as useful not because it is strong, but because it is sensitive. That is why people so often speak of several straws in the wind rather than one. One scrap can be chance. A few scraps pointing the same way begin to look like weather.
A Kindred Picture and a Quiet Joke
Writers have long set the phrase beside the biblical cloud “no bigger than a man’s hand,” another small mark on the horizon that can mean rain is coming. There is also a family link with the straw vote or straw poll, an unofficial count taken only to see which way opinion is leaning. The American writer O. Henry once twisted that cousin phrase and said a straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows. The joke works because the original image already admits the sign is light. It never claims to be proof. It only claims to be early.
Variants
- a straw in the wind
- straws in the wind
- straw(s) in the wind
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