The usual form of that proverb in English is "When there's smoke, there's fire".

Is it? Interestingly I’ve only heard it as “no smoke without fire”

"Where there's smoke, there's fire" is how I've heard that proverb

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is what I’ve heard (from fire heavy Southern California).

This is how we phrase it in Australia.

I'm Australian and have only heard, "where there's smoke, there's fire".

I've heard both.

Smoke is absolutely possible without a fire. Have you ever seared any meat on an electric stovetop? Overheated an empty frying pan?

By what means was electricity generated to be delivered to your stovetop? ;)

("solar panels!" sun is a ball of fire)

("nuclear power plant!" via what means was the steel in the brace for the control rods forged then? :D )

Since we seem to have started a competition about who can provide the least relevant and most pedantic correction, the sun is not a ball of fire. It is a plasma heated by nuclear fusion. There is no oxygen to support combustion.

Congrats, you have now proved that everything is fire. So "no smoke" also means fire if we follow your logic. Was that your intent?

The point of the saying is that if there's evidence (smoke) of something normally worth paying attention to (fire), said thing is indeed present.

If something is smoking on your stove, it's worth paying attention to, whether it's because you're actively searing something on an electric or because your pan is empty.

My OP was the one you should come at with this tone lol, they were the ones that sidetracked off whether or not "if there's smoke, there's fire" is a useful idiom. Maybe a better question would have been, "though there's no actual fire, would not those instances of smoke still be worth noting?"

Shall we start thinking of times smoke is present, and not worth anyone's attention?

They sidetracked by taking too binary of an interpretation, sure, but your rebuttal was flat-out broken.

I don't feel the need to reply to every post I disagree with.

The definition of fire is kind of not precise, Humans are on fire (burning calories with oxygen) well nearly everything in contact with oxygen is "on traditional fire", burning alcohol is invisible and no smoke, and the sun does not need oxygen (fusion), so you can say everything that "decays" is on "fire"....even your mixtape.

Exactly the same in Russian: "Нет дыма без огня".

I guess there was something they could share during the Moscow fire in 1812.