Keep an ear to the ground Informal

To pay close attention to events, opinions, and rumors around you, staying alert to changes before they become widely obvious.

It’s often used approvingly about someone with good instincts for detecting an emerging trend, problem, or shift in mood.

This idiom is commonly, and probably wrongly, attributed specifically to Native American tracking practice; the French writer Chateaubriand described the technique in 1827, but language historians note that literally putting one’s ear to the ground to detect distant sound is a technique documented across many unrelated cultures and contexts, not unique to any one people. The earliest documented English use of the literal practice appears in the “Northampton Mercury” in November 1773, describing Red Sea pilots who could “hear at a very great distance” this way, predating the Native American association by decades. The earliest known figurative use — for staying alert to information rather than literal sound — appears in an 1815 “Connecticut Courant” lottery advertisement urging readers to “put your ears to the ground, and you will hear the great sound of the eagles,” referring to financial winnings rather than any specific ethnic tracking tradition.

As a journalist, she always keeps an ear to the ground.

Keep an ear to the ground for any updates on the merger.

He kept an ear to the ground and heard about the layoffs early.

A: “How did you know about the change so soon?” B: “I keep an ear to the ground.”