Justice.

Meaning: 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.

Meaning: Respect for small resources may contribute to managing larger ones. The threepence and groat exaggerate the connection if they make one habit a test of future worth.

Meaning: The saying imagines thunder frightening a wrongdoer into honesty. It questions whether conduct changes only under the pressure of a dramatic warning.

Meaning: The saying prefers Simon Noland’s lower-status title to Humphrey Hadland’s gentlemanly one. The contrasting names suggest present lack of land beside land once held, while social labels complicate the comparison.

Meaning: A difficulty affecting one person today may affect someone else later. The saying invites fellow feeling rather than confidence that another person’s trouble is safely distant.

Meaning: Words can cause serious harm despite having no physical strength of their own. Recognise the consequences of threats, humiliation or damaging claims rather than dismissing them as mere speech.

Meaning: Words can have consequences for the person who speaks them. The tongue and head divide the act of speaking from the burden that follows.

Editorial context: This joke treats women’s speech as excessive. Fair turn-taking depends on actual conduct and applies consistently to everyone.

Meaning: The line implies that women already speak more than enough with one tongue. Its humour depends on a sexist judgement of women’s speech, not a fair assessment of an individual contribution.

Meaning: Practical contribution can matter when a person is not an effective speaker. The saying contrasts words with hands without making eloquence the measure of competence.

Meaning: Even a skilled person needs suitable means to do the job. Before judging their performance, consider whether the necessary tools, materials or support have actually been provided.

Meaning: Not everyone can hold the leading role at once. The saying can encourage respect for different contributions without treating a hierarchy as fixed or deserved.

Meaning: Commercial dealings may need clear terms even between friends or relatives. The saying separates a transaction’s obligations from personal closeness, without suggesting that business removes the need for fairness, care or consideration.

Meaning: Exchange can generate income. Making trade the mother of money highlights one route to material gain rather than a complete explanation of wealth.

Meaning: Abruptly disrupting an established source of stability can be harmful. The old tree’s removal supplies a warning that should remain a metaphor rather than a rule about people’s age.

Editorial context: This demeaning animal comparison casts women’s refusal as obstinacy. It does not justify coercion or dismiss someone’s reasons.

Meaning: The saying groups women with swine and bees as supposedly difficult to redirect or control. It expresses a demeaning stereotype of obstinacy, rather than a trustworthy description of women.

Meaning: Harmful conduct can continue more easily when hidden from appropriate scrutiny. The nourishment image suggests concealment sustaining a problem.

Meaning: 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.

Meaning: Work performed deserves recognition and agreed compensation. The saying encourages a person not to treat a request for payment as shameful.

Meaning: Depending on another person’s arrangements can delay meeting one’s own needs. Waiting at someone else’s table pictures the limits of control in that dependence.

Meaning: An undertaking that promises excitement or satisfaction can also bring serious trouble. The three examples question an account that notices only pleasure.

Meaning: The saying condemns encouraging war through a religious image of serving evil. It urges scrutiny of rhetoric that turns violence into a cause for enthusiasm.

Meaning: The saying links successful fighting with a favourable peace. A critical reading asks what good peace requires rather than assuming victory supplies it.

Meaning: People who are comfortable may assume everyone else is comfortable too. Your own conditions can make another person’s needs harder to notice.

Meaning: Practical provision for a basic need is one form of wisdom. Winter warmth draws attention to everyday care rather than impressive claims of knowledge.