A word from the mouth is like a stone from a sling.

This saying is transmitted as a Spanish proverb (refrán), part of a long Iberian tradition of moral and practical maxims about speech ethics. It belongs to a family of proverbial warnings that compare spoken words to physical projectiles—arrows, stones, or bullets—to stress that once released they cannot be recalled and may cause harm at a distance. Such proverbs circulated orally for centuries and were later gathered in printed collections of refranes; as with many traditional sayings, it is difficult to tie the line to a single first publication or a specific historical incident. The imagery of the sling evokes everyday rural and martial experience in premodern Spain, where slings were familiar tools and weapons.

The proverb equates spoken words with a projectile: once released, they gain force and direction beyond the speaker’s control. Like a stone from a sling, a remark can wound, provoke retaliation, or set events in motion disproportionate to its size. The image also implies irreversibility—one cannot “unsay” what has been launched into the world. As a piece of folk ethics, it counsels restraint and forethought in speech, especially in anger or gossip, and highlights the asymmetry between the ease of speaking and the difficulty of repairing harm. Its enduring appeal lies in its vivid compression of speech’s power into a single, memorable metaphor.