Proverb

A proverb is a short, traditional saying that captures a common truth drawn from everyday experience or common sense. Often metaphorical, proverbs belong to a category of formulaic language and are passed down through oral tradition, forming a part of folklore. While a proverb is a fixed expression, a proverbial phrase can be altered to fit the grammar of a sentence. Both are types of conventional sayings.

Proverbs appear in many languages, often because cultures borrow them from one another. In the Western world, the Bible—especially the Book of Proverbs—and medieval Latin, aided by the scholar Erasmus, have been major sources. Not all biblical proverbs spread equally: one study found that cultures where the Bible is central have between three hundred and five hundred proverbs from it, while another showed that only 11 of the 106 most common proverbs across Europe come from the Bible. Still, nearly every culture has its own unique proverbs.

Defining a proverb precisely has proven difficult. Lord John Russell once called it “the wit of one, and the wisdom of many,” but scholars like Archer Taylor argued that no definition can fully identify a proverb, since an “incommunicable quality” tells us which sayings are proverbial. Wolfgang Mieder offered a more constructive definition: a proverb is a short, generally known folk saying that contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form, handed down through generations. Others have tried to distinguish proverbs from idioms, clichés, and related forms like proverbial phrases, Wellerisms, maxims, and quotations. For example, Alan Dundes insisted that weather sayings are not true proverbs. Definitions also shift over time and across cultures. In the Chumburung language of Ghana, literal proverbs are called *aŋase* and metaphoric ones *akpare*. Among the Bini of Nigeria, three words—*ere*, *ivbe*, and *itan*—refer to proverbs about history, current events, and formal discourse. The Balochi use *batal* for ordinary proverbs and *bassīttuks* for those with background stories. Some communities blend proverbs and riddles into “proverb riddles.” A proverbial phrase differs from an idiomatic phrase: the latter’s meaning comes from figurative language, while the former’s figurative sense extends its literal meaning. Some experts classify both as types of idioms.

Examples of common proverbs include “A dog is a man’s best friend,” “All that glitters is not gold,” “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” “Fortune favours the bold,” “The early bird gets the worm,” and “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

Proverbs come from many sources. Some are crafted by thinkers like Confucius, Plato, and Baltasar Gracián. Others are drawn from poetry, stories, songs, commercials, movies, literature, and the sayings of figures such as Jesus and Shakespeare.