# the Fates have spoken

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-fates-have-spoken
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A decision has been made that cannot be changed, as if it were destiny.

## Examples

- The boss picked Tom, so the Fates have spoken.
- The committee's vote was final and unanimous; the Fates have spoken, and there was nothing left to appeal.
- When the supreme court refused to hear the case, the lawyers told their client the Fates have spoken: the ruling would stand, and no further legal path remained anywhere in the country.

## Origin

Older than the gods themselves, three sisters sat apart from the world and settled the destiny of every living thing. They were the Fates, and even Zeus, king of all the gods, could not undo what they had decided. The first, Clotho, held a spindle and spun the thread of a human life, drawing it out of nothing at the moment of birth. The second, Lachesis, measured that thread against her rod, fixing how long the life would run and what would befall it along the way. The third was Atropos, whose name meant unturnable, and she held the shears. When Atropos raised her shears and cut the thread, the life was over, and no prayer, no bribe, no act of heroism could join the ends back together. What the three spun and measured and cut was final — the one law binding gods and mortals alike, spoken once and never taken back. Kings raged against their pronouncements and heroes struggled against them, but the struggling only carried them, step by step, straight into the very fate that had been decreed. Once the sisters had spoken, the matter was closed, sealed as tightly as a grave. To say the Fates have spoken is to mean that a decision has come down which no argument can reverse — the thing is settled, final and beyond appeal, as though destiny itself had ruled on it.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.