Context and Question: In this afternoon's class, the teacher introduced a proverb to the class: "The empty vessels make the greatest sound". He said it meant "Foolish people are the most talkative or noisy" and it was an English proverb, but he didn't tell us how to use it. Does it make sense to you and also mean the same to you? How I think: I looked up the term just now and it turned out to be many versions: The/An empty vessels make the greatest/most/loudest sound. And most of the results showing this proverb is in current use are Chinese, but here is a quote from wikipedia: And now I see now why my teacher was confident with its validity because he also mentioned Shakespeare once used it. I don't think this proverb makes too much sense to you, am I right?