What is the meaning of the saying When your chickens come home to roost?

Answer 1

ANSWER 1: Every chicken comes back to their roost every night. It means the same as the saying "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." All it means is that everyone comes back to something.

ANSWER 2: Chickens scratch around in the barnyard, in the fields and woods during the day. But at night they come home to the hen-house to roost. This saying is comparing a person's evil or foolish deeds to chickens. If a person does wrong, the "payback" might not be immediate. But at some point, at the end of the day, those "chickens" will come home to roost. "One has to face the consequences of one's past actions. In English, the proverb goes back to Chaucer's 'Parson's Tale' (c 1390). It was also know to Terence (about 190-159 B.C.) First attested in the United States in the 'Life of Jefferson S. Batkins' (1871). The proverb is found in varying forms: Curses, like chickens, come home to roost; Sooner or later chickens, come home to roost..."
The consequences of ones bad actions will eventually catch up to him or her.
It means that bad or silly things done in the past are beginning to cause problems.

I believe that it is when someone does something bad they need to take precautions because consequences follow.

It is kind of like karma. what goes around comes around.

I had to research it for my essay on Malcolm X and he says it about J.F.KENNEDY. He did nothing for black people so Malcolm x says its his own fault because him not doing anything for civil rights had consequences.

Answer 2

If you think about it, you can figure it out. When chickens come to roost, all of them are there together in their hut. If you use this figuratively, you mean that whatever someone has done is coming "home" to them, that their actions are having consequences.

Answer 3

Shem, Ham, Japeth