Browse Definitions :

Do you reap what you sow or what you sew?

Writing for Business

Which is correct?
Microsoft has often been accused of ______ FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to keep customers leery of switching to competitor’s products.
a. sowing
b. sewing


Answer: a.

Explanation:
Sewing is stitching something together, like a tailor sews two pieces of fabric or a doctor sews a nasty cut. Sowing, on the other hand, is planting, as in putting seeds in the ground that you hope will grow. I guess as a culture, we’re increasingly distanced from the agricultural past but I was surprised by how frequently “sew” pops up online when it should be “sow.” In fact, it appears to be much more common in the phrase “you reap what you ____.”

Google poll:

You reap what you sew: 17,100,000

You reap what you sow:  3,200,000

Even allowing for the intentional uses of “sew” as a pun, that’s an awful lot of instances of the wrong use.

Paul Brians includes “reap what you sew” in his Common Errors in English Usage:

When you plant seeds you sow them. Galatians 6:7 says “A man reaps what he sows” (harvests what he plants, gets what he deserves). This agricultural metaphor gets mangled frequently into “you reap what you sew.” At best, you might rip what you sew, but you probably wouldn’t want to tell people about it.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Dig Deeper on Writing for Business

Networking
  • Telnet

    Telnet is a network protocol used to virtually access a computer and provide a two-way, collaborative and text-based ...

  • big-endian and little-endian

    The term endianness describes the order in which computer memory stores a sequence of bytes.

  • Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)

    Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol that maps dynamic IP addresses to permanent physical machine addresses in a local...

Security
  • Mitre ATT&CK framework

    The Mitre ATT&CK (pronounced miter attack) framework is a free, globally accessible knowledge base that describes the latest ...

  • timing attack

    A timing attack is a type of side-channel attack that exploits the amount of time a computer process runs to gain knowledge about...

  • privileged identity management (PIM)

    Privileged identity management (PIM) is the monitoring and protection of superuser accounts that hold expanded access to an ...

CIO
HRSoftware
  • employee resource group (ERG)

    An employee resource group is a workplace club or more formally realized affinity group organized around a shared interest or ...

  • employee training and development

    Employee training and development is a set of activities and programs designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of ...

  • employee sentiment analysis

    Employee sentiment analysis is the use of natural language processing and other AI techniques to automatically analyze employee ...

Customer Experience
  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

  • customer insight (consumer insight)

    Customer insight, also known as consumer insight, is the understanding and interpretation of customer data, behaviors and ...

  • buyer persona

    A buyer persona is a composite representation of a specific type of customer in a market segment.

Close