Read with verse 14, which answers it in the very next line. The dripping image returns at 27:15, and the housetop version at 21:9.
Quick answer
Two domestic miseries, one sudden and one relentless. The verse is about what home trouble does over time, not about what women are.
Read both lines
The two halves differ in tempo, and that is the observation. A foolish son is ruin, a collapse. A house in constant conflict is a leak, and the NKJV footnotes the word behind "continual" as irritation, which is the exact register: nothing here is dramatic, and that is what makes it unbearable. Anyone who has lain awake listening to a drip knows the point does not need explaining. The verse is written to a man about his own household from inside it, and its honesty about slow attrition is worth keeping.
What it does not mean
This is not a verse about wives as a class, and it cannot be used as a label for a particular woman. The book's own next sentence forbids it: verse 14 says a prudent wife is from the LORD, so the chapter corrects the impression within one line of making it. Proverbs closes with twenty-two verses of praise for a woman at 31:10–31, and it aims the identical image at a contentious household rather than at a gender, since the same book describes a contentious man at 26:21. A verse about a hard marriage names a condition both people are living in. Anyone who reaches for it to win an argument at home has already become the drip.
Related: Proverbs 19:14 · Proverbs 21:9 · Proverbs 27:15 · Proverbs 31:10–31
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.