猿も木から落ちる saru mo ki kara ochiru Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees

猿も木から落ちる is a whole scene: a monkey, a tree, and a fall. も means even: the fall can happen to the best of them. In the Japanese dictionaries its sense is narrower than nobody is perfect: the skilled person slips at the very thing they are best at. In use it goes two ways: a warning not to relax where you are good, and an excuse for a slip, whether the expert's own or that of anyone less skilled.

The proverb's oldest known witness is a haikai verse in 鷹筑波集, an anthology prefaced in 1638 and printed in 1642, which makes the autumn leaves fall with it and calls it a たとへ, a saying; a book of sayings set it down in 1656.

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