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
A fierce burst of trouble may pass quickly. The saying offers patience during an intense moment, but its confident prediction should not be treated as a guarantee about weather or hardship.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Gentleness, goodness, generosity and truth are proposed as responses to anger, evil, miserliness and lying. The saying favours embodying an alternative to another person’s conduct.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Weakness linked with cruelty and gentleness with strength contrasts domination with a valued form of conduct. The irregular wording invites a qualified reading of strength through restraint.
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An arena urging a bull’s death while forbidding the bull to kill contrasts imposed violence with a demand for one-sided restraint. The saying exposes unequal expectations.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Threats do not always become actions. The saying distinguishes an announced harm from its fulfilment but offers no reliable measure of the danger in a particular case.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying puts love and hate on opposite sides of a thin line. It pictures intense attachment and hostility as close enough for a change to seem small.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying gives both speech and silence their own time. It presents responding well as a matter of fitting the action to the occasion.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Both speaking and remaining silent can be appropriate, depending on the situation. Judge what the moment requires instead of treating either constant speech or constant restraint as wise in itself.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying rejects arguing as never having a good reason. It strongly favours avoiding contentious exchanges.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Clemency described as leadership’s finest compliment praises restraint in exercising power. The saying gives mercy an honoured place in authority.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Hate described as having no medicine makes it resistant to a simple remedy in the saying’s image. The line questions an easy cure for hostility.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Peace is described as the only happiness. The saying gives freedom from turmoil an overriding value.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Pause to consider what your words will do before saying them. A little thought can prevent a careless remark that is difficult to take back.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying imagines a few women and a goose producing the noise of a market. It mocks women’s conversation through an animal comparison, rather than establishing that women are unusually talkative.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Even an intense grief may change with time. The saying offers hope for easing, while its sweeping claim should not impose an outcome or deadline.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying describes time as curing sorrow. A careful interpretation treats that as hope for gradual change rather than a promise that waiting erases loss.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The phrase describes burying a hatchet. In the supplied reading, it means ending a quarrel or making peace.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
A response that intensifies a problem will not resolve it. The oil-and-fire image warns about escalating a quarrel while claiming to calm it, without requiring silence or concession whenever someone needs to raise a legitimate concern.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Giving a past wrong less hold over your attention can be more useful than retaliation. The saying values moving beyond resentment without requiring you to erase what happened or abandon necessary protection.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying favours freeing your attention from a past wrong over answering it with further harm. Moving on can be valuable while remembering what happened and keeping appropriate boundaries.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Frightening someone is a poor way to seek their willing approach. The hind image criticises pressure that drives the hoped-for connection away, while a constructive reading rejects the idea of catching a person and keeps their choice and boundaries central.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional (French-language collection)
Refusing to engage can prevent rude speech from controlling a conversation. Deaf ears represent a deliberate choice to withhold attention from an insult.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying opposes scaring a bird to catching it. As an analogy, an approach that drives a desired response away may defeat its own aim.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Death threatened to the brave compared with water promised to a duck gives intimidation a supposedly ineffective target. The saying imagines courage resisting a threat.
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