Who first said that thing about the pot calling the kettle black?

Search: pot kettle origin

Why: I hate, I mean really hate when people say things like, "Pot. Kettle. Black," or, "Pot, meet Kettle," or "Hi, Pot," or any variation of any of those words. I hate it so much.

Answer: It dates back to at least the 1600s, when people had cast iron pots and kettles in their Medieval kitchens! The cookware turned black from the oil, food residue, and smokey open flames over which they were heated.

One of the earliest written uses appears in Don Quixote (1605):

said the frying-pan to the kettle, get away, blackbreech

and in the Covent Garden Journal (1752):

Dares thus the kettle to rebuke our sin!
Dares thus the kettle say the pot is black!

See tons of really uninspired political cartoons here.

lolwut

Source: WiseGeek, Wikipedia

The More You Know: Variations from around the world:

• Arabic: The camel can not see the crookedness of its own neck
• Finnish: The pot reproaches the kettle – black [is] the side of each
• French: The shovel mocks the poker
• German: One donkey calls the other one longears
• Hungarian: The owl says the sparrow has a large head
• Japanese: For the sleep in one's eyes to laugh at the snot in one's nose
• Korean: The dung-stained dog reproaches the chaff-stained dog.
• Polish: The cauldron was reprimanding the pot and it soots itself
• Spanish:
  • Venezuela: An armadillo telling a turtle it is too hard shelled
  • Colombia: If you have a tail made of straw, you'd better stay away from the fire
• Urdu: The thief scolding the magistrate in reverse