What begins at home, according to the famous saying?

If you say charity begins at home, you mean that people should deal with the needs of people close to them before they think about helping others.

This proverb is a version of Paul’s advice to Timothy in the New Testament (Timothy 5:4), which in the King James version was translated as “But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents.”

The fourteenth-century English churchman John Wycliffe wrote, ca. 1380, “Charity schuld bigyne at hem-self,” which soon became “at home,” not just in English but in numerous other languages.

Later theologians suggested that charity should begin but not end at home, yet even in the twentieth century it continued to be pointed out that it often does (“Charity begins at home and usually stays there,” H. B. Thompson, Body, Boots and Britches, 1940).