Words worth understanding
Start with the thought in plain English. Then explore the imagery, a practical example, when to use it, and what the saying does not mean.
4,000 entries with editorial explanations. The wider collection also contains entries still awaiting an individual interpretation.
proverb · Traditional
Quietness may leave room for reflection, but it does not reveal how much someone is thinking. The saying favours thought over excessive speech while offering no reliable measure of intelligence or attention.
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The saying distinguishes one fallen hair from being bald. As a wider analogy, a small loss is separated from the larger condition it might be mistaken for.
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The saying turns the possibility of something going wrong into a certainty. It voices a pessimistic expectation of failure.
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The rhyme predicts rain when bees stay at home. It treats their apparent inactivity as a weather sign.
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The saying reverses the apparent meaning of Candlemas weather: sunshine foretells more winter, while showers promise its end. It is a date-based forecasting rhyme.
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The saying predicts a severe winter when Christmas falls on a Monday. It assigns weather significance to the weekday of a calendar celebration.
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Everyone saying something is treated as making it true. The saying gives consensus a decisive role in a claim.
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Gold imagined rusting raises a question about what would happen to iron. The saying gives failure in an esteemed example implications for something held to a lesser standard.
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Something not improving then certainly worsening gives an unresolved problem a prediction of decline. The supplied sentence includes a Yiddish label and unusual worst wording.
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Something said to be everywhere if present here, and nowhere if absent here, gives an unspecified local presence a universal significance. The wording leaves what it refers to unclear.
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The saying takes summer-like conditions at the start of January as a sign of wintry conditions lasting into May. It predicts compensation for an unusually mild beginning.
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Permission given to others not automatically extending to oneself distinguishes another person’s situation from one’s own. The saying asks whether an apparent precedent applies.
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Watching alone imagined to make every dog a butcher questions exposure being sufficient for skill. The saying distinguishes observing a practice from being able to perform it.
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The saying predicts a dry spell from many spiders spinning webs. It makes visible activity a sign of the weather to come.
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The saying makes the ash leafing before the oak a sign of past or future drought. Its broad time window lets the same observation refer backward or forward.
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The saying predicts rain when clouds move against the wind. It makes a contrast between two perceived directions into a weather sign.
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The saying predicts different weather from whether the cock or hen moults first. The order of two animal changes is made a sign of variable or harsh conditions.
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The saying claims that rain on the first of July predicts more rain over four weeks. It turns one day’s condition into a prolonged expectation.
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The saying connects a goose’s high honk with fair weather and a low honk with foul weather. It turns a contrast in the bird’s sound into a forecast.
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The saying pictures a new moon holding an old moon in her lap and predicts fair weather. Its embrace image describes a faint lunar disc beside a bright crescent.
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The saying takes a fair, clear twenty-fourth of August as grounds for hope about the coming autumn. One day is made a sign of a much longer period.
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A buffalo becoming great in the absence of elephants makes status depend on comparison. The saying asks what a judgment of size or prominence takes as its reference.
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Cakes substituted when bread is insufficient propose an alternative provision. The saying answers a shortage with a different item.
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Things becoming easier perhaps indicating a downhill course questions ease being mistaken for progress. The saying uses direction to distinguish reduced effort from a valued outcome.
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