# the patience of Penelope

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-patience-of-penelope
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

Great loyalty and patience shown by someone who waits faithfully for a long time.

## Examples

- Raising three toddlers takes the patience of Penelope.
- She waited years for his ship to return, showing the patience of Penelope even when the neighbours told her to move on.
- It took the patience of Penelope to see the decade-long restoration through, as one setback after another delayed the reopening while the trustees quietly kept the faith.

## Origin

When Odysseus sailed off to the war at Troy, he left behind a young wife, Penelope, and a baby son. He was gone ten years to the fighting and ten more lost at sea, and in all that time no word came home to say whether he lived or lay drowned. The years turned Penelope's house into a siege. A crowd of arrogant suitors moved into her halls, eating her stores, drinking her wine, and demanding she give her missing husband up for dead and marry one of them. She had no army to drive them out — only her wits. So she made them a promise. She would choose a new husband, she said, the moment she had finished weaving a fine burial shroud for her old father-in-law. All day she sat at her great loom and wove, and the suitors waited. But each night, by lamplight, she quietly unpicked every thread she had set that day. For three years the shroud was never finished and the suitors never guessed why. She held them off with nothing but a loom and an unbreakable will, until at last Odysseus came home in disguise and the long waiting was rewarded. To show the patience of Penelope is to wait like that — faithfully, cleverly, and without giving up, however long the years or however loud the voices telling you to stop.

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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.