let sleeping dogs lie

present singular third person lets sleeping dogs lie · participle present letting sleeping dogs lie

1. idiomaticTo leave things as they are; especially, to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument; to leave disagreements in the past.

   Eventually, they decided it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie and not discuss the matter any further.

   5 more examples

   Near-synonyms: let it be, leave it be, let things be, leave things be, let it alone, leave it alone, let things alone, leave things alone; let bygones be bygones, let nature take its course

   A: I noticed a minor typo in the proofs just now, but I think they're already doing the make-ready on the press. B: Time to let sleeping dogs lie then.

   But, leaving novelists alone, on the whole we find in real life that if speech is silvern, silence is essentially golden, and that more harm is done by saying too much than by saying too little; above all, that infinite mischief arises by not letting sleeping dogs lie.

   1868 August 29, “Sleeping Dogs”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 26, number 670, page 287

   Sometimes you just had to let stuff go. Endlessly rehashing old hurts just made things worse. It was far better, I'd learned, to let sleeping dogs lie.

   2016, Helene Becker, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, Orca Book Publishers, →ISBN, page 217

   Crystal might have said that those perfect lips were zipped, but the kidnappers had no way of knowing that. Should he let sleeping dogs lie?

   2019, Kate Atkinson, Big Sky, →ISBN, page 261

   Synonyms: let it be, leave it be, let things be, leave things be, let it alone, leave it alone, let things alone, leave things alone