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The Durham Proverbs are considered to have been used to document everyday business of the people of Anglo-Saxon England. The proverbs were used in monastic schools to teach text along with other texts such as the Disticha Catonis (also known as the "Dicts of Cato") and a Middle English collection titled the Proverbs of Hendyng.
A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. [1] [2] In 1768, John Ray defined a proverbial phrase as:
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The exact origin of this proverb is unknown and several variations exist. The first full version of the phrase appeared in a London newspaper in 1828 where it was referred to as a Portuguese proverb. [8] The earliest known text resembling this phrase occurs in Virgil's Aeneid: "facilis descensus Averno (the descent to hell is easy)". [9]
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).
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 ...
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He was also editor of the Supplement Series to Proverbium, a series of book on various facets of proverb studies. Each volume of Proverbium contained his annual list of recent proverb scholarship. He has published extensively in English and in German. He is the creator of the term anti-proverb, proverbs that are twisted from their original ...