make one's bed and lie in it

English

Alternative forms

make one's own bed and lie in it
make one's bed / make one's own bed
make one's bed and sleep in it
make the bed one lies in

Pronunciation

Audio (AU) (file)

Verb

make one's bed and lie in it (third-person singular simple present makes one's bed and lies in it, present participle making one's bed and lying in it, simple past made one's bed and lay in it, past participle made one's bed and lain in it)

(idiomatic) To create a difficult situation whose unpleasant consequences one must now endure.
- 1861, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage, ch. 27:
  It was true that he had made his own bed, and he understood the justice which required him to lie upon it.
- 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 33”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], OCLC 365836:
  [...] one of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
- 1949, Upton Sinclair, O Shepherd, Speak! Part I, reprinted, published 2001, →ISBN, page 120:
  Harry said, "It's too bad, but of course we couldn't attempt to smuggle him. The old man has made his bed and he must lie in it."
- 2005 Nov. 26, Bob Kropfli, "Letters: Second-Term Blues," Time:
  What has happened is that all the horrible moves he made during his first term . . . are perfectly evident to all. Bush made his bed during his first four years, and now he has to lie in it.
- 2008 Aug. 21, Steven Erlanger, "Europe Grows Impatient as Delays Pile Up in Georgia," New York Times (retrieved 27 June 2011):
  “Saakashvili made his own bed,” said Nick Witney, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Affairs and the former chief executive of the European Defense Agency. “It was a pretty catastrophic miscalculation.”
- 2010, Arlynn Leiber Presser, Blue-Jeaned Prince, →ISBN, page 149:
  He had made his own bed, chosen his own course in life, taking the path of easy money over hard work and initiative.

Related terms

you make the bed you lie in

Translations

to create a difficult situation and endure unpleasant consequences

Chinese:
Mandarin: 自作自受 (zh) (zìzuòzìshòu, literally “you must bear what you made for yourself”)
Finnish: kiehua omassa liemessään (literally “to boil in one's own broth”), niin makaat kuin petaat
French: comme on fait son lit, on se couche (fr)
Hungarian: ki mint veti ágyát, úgy alussza álmát (hu)
Italian: hai voluto la bicicletta? adesso pedala (literally “you wanted a bike, now pedal”), hai voluto la bicicletta e adesso pedala
Japanese: 自業自得 (ja) (じごうじとく, jigōjitouku)
Korean: 자업자득(自業自得) (ko) (ja'eopjadeuk)
Lithuanian: kaip pasiklosi, taip išmiegosi, kad prisivirei košės, tai ir srėbk (literally “now that you've cooked some gruel for yourself, slurp it”)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: som man reder, så ligger man (no)
Polish: nawarzyć piwa (pl)
Russian: как посте́лешь, так и поспи́шь (kak postélešʹ, tak i pospíšʹ), сам испёк, сам и ку́шай (sam ispjók, sam i kúšaj, literally “you baked it, so eat it yourself”), сам завари́л ка́шу, сам и расхлёбывай (sam zavaríl kášu, sam i rasxljóbyvaj, literally “you cooked the kasha, you eat it”)
Spanish: quien mala cama hace en ella se yace, a lo hecho, pecho
Swedish: som man bäddar får man ligga (literally “as one makes the bed, one has to lie”)
Turkish: kendin ettin, kendin buldun (literally “you find what you made for yourself”)