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Below is an alphabetical list of widely used and repeated proverbial phrases. If known, their origins are noted. A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition.
However, unlike the examples given above in English, all of which are anti-proverbs, Tatira's examples are standard proverbs. Where the English proverbs above are meant to make a potential customer smile, in one of the Zimbabwean examples "both the content of the proverb and the fact that it is phrased as a proverb secure the idea of a secure ...
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
“Train children in the way they should go; when they grow old, they won’t depart from it.” — Proverbs 22:6 “Now faith, hope, and love remain — these three things — and the greatest ...
William Jenkyn referenced the proverb in its modern form in a 1652 sermon: "Blood is thicker (we say) then [sic] water; and truly the blood of Christ beautifying any of our friends and children, should make us prefer them before those, between whom and us there’s only a watery relation of nature." [5]
One of the earliest recorded instances of the proverb is in one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Crow and the Pitcher” from the mid 6th century BCE. Plato's Republic says "our need will be the real creator", [5] which Jowett's 1894 translation rendered loosely as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention."
Its most common use is in response to an affirmative statement, for example "I saw Mrs. Smith exercising, I swear!" to which the response given would be something like, "Yeah right, and cows fly". Other variations slightly fallen into disuse include cuando las ranas crien pelo ("when frogs grow hair") and cuando San Juan agache el dedo ("when ...
Sententiae, the nominative plural of the Latin word sententia, are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. Sententia, the nominative singular, also called a "sentence", is a kind of rhetorical proof. Through the invocation of a ...