let bygones be bygones
Meaning
To forgive and forget past disagreements.
Usage frequency
Common · 70 corpus occurrences
Recorded for “Let bygones be bygones” in COCA, searched on 2016-08-31.
About these frequency groups
Groups use full-form occurrence counts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), recorded in 2016–2017. For a proverb with several forms, we use the highest individual count, since adding overlapping forms could count the same occurrence twice.
These are historical American English corpus counts, not estimates of how often everyone uses a saying today. A zero means no full-form match was recorded. The source’s separate familiarity ratings are retained in the data but do not determine this ordering.
We grouped variants, merged reviewed duplicate entries, and preserved existing editorial wording. The source includes historical and dated sayings; inclusion is not an endorsement.
In a conversation
“After years of feuding, the brothers decided to let bygones be bygones.”
When to use it
Used to propose reconciliation after a disagreement; it may sound dismissive if the other person still needs an apology.