A rolling stone gathers no moss - means?

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A rolling stone gathers no moss.

What does it mean?

I'm not really sure. I hope someone comes with a good answer...not like mine.

My interpretation: If one is always on the go, eager to learn, one does not get settled into one's ways, ways which may seem comfortable but where you don't learn anything new.

Good enough, but it can be used variously for any kind of baggage that the person on the go does not accumulate. As usual, it can be used either positively or negatively - either the rolling stone is free of all that junk, which is great, or the rolling stone misses out on the good things of stability, which is bad. I think IK have heard the positive take more often - keep active, don't get stagnant.

Of course, as a compulsive collector who has travelled a lot I know it is not quite true.

I have never understood that (but I never asked because everyone seem to get it, never tried to google it because I did not really care).

I only see a stone rolling down a hill and remaining uncovered by the moss. I thought that since stones are hard and moss is soft and can "break" easily it meant that you can break something or crush it by being "mean" but it will not stay with you is you are not soft.


Though, I have just googled it and it means that you cannot possess many things or become rich through change and travels.

I believe that's a french saying.

It means
"if you are always involved in doing things, you wont get stagnant"
or
"continuous action prevents signs, symptoms, and the negative consequences of inactivity"
or
"if you aren't in motion / action, you'll get covered, buried, and lost / left behind"

This is a cool thread - none of this would have occurred to me. I just always saw a boulder rolling down a hill. It makes me feel kind of stupid.

It's a proverb advising that to be settled and to have stability reaps rewards. If one is constanting wandering from place to place, then one will never establish material security. In other words, when we continuously change jobs and residences, with few or no responsibilities, then we cannot build a family, circle of freinds, or accumulate wealth.

It's silly, because stones almost never roll, and on the rare occasions when a stone does roll, it doesn't roll for very long before it stops. The short time that a rolling stone is rolling for wouldn't be enough for it to gather moss even if it were standing still.

most proverbs are silly. thats how you can tell something is a proverb.
If someone says something that doesn't seem to fit the sentance / context, chances are...

From Wiki:

Meaning # 1 - Classic interpretatioon.
It appears that the original intent of the proverb saw the growth of moss as desirable, and that the intent was to condemn mobility as unprofitable.

A more understandable (logical) phrase would be:
[a frequently replanted tree yields little fruit.]


Meaning # 2 - Contemporary interpretation.
Equating moss to undesirable stagnation has turned the traditional understanding on its head: Erasmus's proverb gave the name "rolling stone" to people who are agile (mobile) and never get rusty due to constant motion.

in the movie "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" a psychiatrist asks [the character] R.P. McMurphy, what the phrase "a rolling stone gathers no moss" means to him, to which R.P. replies, "that makes about as much sense as 'don't wash your dirty underwear in public.'"

Maybe it refers to mill wheels? i.e. keep your mill stone turning or it'll moss up... maybe it was all just a piece of Medieval technical advice that later generations mistook to be a proverb.

Who knows, in 500 years, it'll be 'keep your engine running or your windscreen will freeze over'

I did not know what that phrase really meant but one interpretation is that a person who constantly moves from place to place (the rolling stone) does not establish any beneficial long-term connections or roots (gathers no moss).

My brother asked me that once. I thought I was really clever for figuring out (after years of hearing it and being confused) that it meant "if a rock is rolling all the time then it's not sitting still enough for moss to grow on it". He freaked out because he'd heard it was used in screening for mental illness and he didn't actually expect me to answer so literally.