Proverbs and their meanings.

Meaning: The saying puts Cry you mercy beside a question about who killed the speaker’s cat. A courteous or apologetic opening is immediately followed by a serious complaint.

Meaning: Enjoyment and good judgement can go together. You can be cheerful or playful while still paying attention to your responsibilities and the effects on others.

Meaning: A meal can be an occasion for pleasant company and good humour. Meat here stands for the meal, rather than only a particular food.

Meaning: The expression wishes for a pleasant meeting, a friendly parting and another welcome encounter. It values the continuity of good company as a hope or greeting, rather than a prediction about how every relationship will develop.

Meaning: Enjoying life need not be treated as less serious or worthwhile than sorrow. The saying refuses to give sadness a privileged place in how a life is valued.

Meaning: Great energy can cause trouble when it is not guided by an understanding of the situation. Enthusiasm or force needs relevant awareness rather than being admired independently of its effect.

Meaning: When the intended use of something is unavailable, consider whether another suitable use is possible. The saying encourages adaptation to a constraint rather than insisting that the original plan is the only worthwhile outcome.

Meaning: Access to a small benefit may be preferable to taking on the burden of maintaining its whole source. The cow and bottle of milk contrast ownership with obtaining only what is needed.

Meaning: The speaker claims to see as far into a millstone as the picker. The comparison presents equal insight into something whose interior is not readily visible.

Meaning: A less prominent part of shared work can contribute as much as the visible one. The lower and upper millstones ask that useful effort be recognised, without assuming every role has identical duties or impact.

Meaning: People or concerns that are no longer regularly encountered may receive less attention. Distance can make remembering and maintaining a connection require deliberate effort rather than routine contact.

Meaning: A person’s expression may appear to reveal what they are feeling. The forehead and eyes are presented as a visible picture of an otherwise private mind.

Editorial context: This portrays women’s judgement as unreliable. Changing a view can be reasonable; gender does not establish inconsistency.

Meaning: The saying compares women’s minds with changeable winter wind, presenting them as unreliable or inconsistent. This is a sexist generalisation, not evidence about the judgement of a particular woman.

Meaning: Revising a view when there is good reason can be a sign of sound judgement. The saying challenges stubbornness, without making every change sensible or every settled conviction foolish.

Meaning: A small amount of enjoyment can feel more valuable than a large burden of sorrow. The contrasting weights and prices express appreciation for relief, without treating grief as something a cheerful moment can simply remove.

Meaning: A small harmful act can still matter to the person affected. The saying challenges dismissal based only on scale, and encourages a proportionate response that identifies the actual effect and what would put it right.

Meaning: Problems can arrive quickly in large amounts yet take slow, incremental work to resolve. The unequal measures dramatise that imbalance, without predicting that every setback will be severe or that recovery has a fixed pace.

Meaning: The saying expresses how difficulties can feel clustered or create further problems. It is not a statistical rule or a prediction that another setback must follow the one you have experienced.

Meaning: When a result depends on meeting a definite target, narrowly missing it still leaves that target unmet. The saying distinguishes success from closeness, while allowing partial progress and effort to have value for other purposes.

Meaning: The saying claims that the number of March mists matches the number of May frosts. It offers a countable early sign for a later event.

Meaning: A misunderstood account can become false information as it is repeated. Clarify what was meant and what is actually known before treating a confusing report as a settled fact.

Meaning: A crowd can be criticised for acting without shared deliberation. Many heads but no brains contrasts the number of people with the quality of their collective judgment.

Meaning: Modesty can support good conduct by leaving room for others and for correction. The saying treats it as an aid to virtue, without making quietness proof of goodness or requiring a person to conceal an achievement.

Meaning: The saying assigns good or bad outcomes to the weekday of an undertaking. Its list promises wealth, health or misfortune from timing alone.