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
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 claims that grass growing in January will fare worse through the rest of the year. A favourable-looking early sign is given an adverse long-term meaning.
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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 imagines a partridge with a woodcock’s thigh as the best bird. It constructs an ideal by combining selected features of two creatures.
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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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Ordering someone else’s dog is offered as a test for an inflated sense of influence. The saying uses an unresponsive audience to puncture self-importance.
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Speaking to God through the wind gives prayer an open natural image rather than a named intermediary. The saying connects expression with something moving beyond oneself.
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The saying makes bringing the leaf to the grave a condition of having fruit. It contrasts a desired yield with a leaf being put away or buried.
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The saying brings dock in and sends nettle out. The paired plant names and opposite directions suggest replacing an unwanted sting or trouble with something thought to relieve it.
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The saying points to something familiar across different countries: each has a morning. Figuratively, it can soften the impression that another place is wholly alien, while differences in people’s lives and local conditions still deserve attention.
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The saying predicts a fair afternoon from a cloudy morning during the old phase of the moon. It combines a sky observation with a lunar condition.
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The saying treats a crowing hen as a sign that things will go badly. A critical reading notices the negative judgment attached to an animal taking an unexpected role.
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The saying denies lightning recurring at one place. Figuratively, it can reassure someone that an unusual event will not happen the same way again.
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The saying gives a long-foretold event a long duration and a short-notice event a brief one. In the supplied reading, it concerns changing weather.
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The saying connects mackerel-patterned and mare’s-tail clouds with lowering sails on tall ships. It presents a sky observation as a reason for precaution.
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The saying makes a vine’s poverty the route to its keeper’s wealth. It sets reduced provision for one participant beside a promised benefit for another.
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The saying judges grass appearing in March as unhelpful. Its absolute statement makes early growth an unwelcome sign.
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March is described as a month of varied conditions. The compressed phrase makes changeability its defining image.
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The saying contrasts weather whitening clothes with darkening the complexion of people outdoors. It ties seasonal exposure to appearance in a gendered image.
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Unpleasant early weather is linked with a pleasing later display of flowers. The sequence can express hope that present conditions help prepare a later benefit.
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The saying claims that medlars become good only when rotten. In the checked horticultural context, their later softening offers a qualified reading of the apparent reversal.
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The saying grows mighty oaks from tiny acorns. It encourages respect for small beginnings that may become substantial.
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Fortunes and flowers both ending picture material circumstances beside visible impermanence. The saying warns against assuming a present advantage lasts unchanged.
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The saying treats still wind as making any weather acceptable. A careful reading questions its absolute confidence that calmness removes every difficulty.
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