The proverb “Il cencio dice male dello straccio” (literally “The rag speaks ill of the cloth”) is used to describe a person who criticizes someone else despite having exactly the same flaws.
The Meaning
As we have seen, in Tuscany, “cencio” and “straccio” are essentially synonyms: both refer to an old, dirty cloth used for cleaning. If a cencio insults a straccio by calling it “dirty,” it is doing something ridiculous, because they are exactly the same thing.
Modern Usage
It is used when someone launches a severe critique or a moral judgment, forgetting that they are no better than the person they are attacking. It is the Tuscan equivalent of the biblical metaphor about “looking at the speck in someone else’s eye while ignoring the log in your own.”
