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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:
All the common words, idioms, proverbs, and modern academic, literary, scientific, and technical terms of the Urdu language have been listed. Only those obsolete words and idioms have been included which are found in ancient books. They are indicated by the symbol "Qaaf". The English words that are commonly used in Urdu have also been included. [5]
The reference to horses was first in James Carmichael's Proverbs in Scots printed in 1628, which included the lines: "And wishes were horses, pure [poor] men wald ride". [4] The first mention of beggars is in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670, in the form "If wishes would bide, beggars would ride". [4]
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A similar proverb in Japanese is 目の寄る所へ玉が寄る, literally "where the eyes go, the eyeballs follow" but with an understood idiomatic meaning of "like draws like", which can be translated into idiomatic English as "birds of a feather flock together", [13] as may the Japanese saying 類は友を呼ぶ, "similar calls a friend."
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).
Wendy Doniger relates it to a French and English proverb: "In the dark, all cats are grey." Hegel criticised naive ideas of the Absolute, which he ridiculed as "like a night, as people say, in which all cows are black." Dashiell Hammett in The Dain Curse (1929) referred to a "blind man in a dark room hunting for a black hat that wasn't there".
Page from the 1901 edition of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–34) on which the proverb appears, marking its earliest usage in English. "Speech is silver, silence is golden" is a proverb extolling the value of silence over speech. Its modern form most likely originated in Arabic culture, where it was used as early as the 9th century.