The collection / 38,838 fragments
Explore passages mentioning knowledge, know. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.
Meaning: The comparison questions an account offered without the experience or evidence needed for its subject. Its disability-based insult should be distinguished from that useful question.
Meaning: A large amount of material may contain little that serves the purpose. The bran and meal contrast questions apparent abundance, encouraging attention to useful substance rather than volume alone.
Meaning: The saying ranks butter differently across the day: gold in the morning, silver at noon and lead at night. The metal sequence makes its imagined value decline with time.
Meaning: The saying puts butter in a cow’s horn once a year. It presents an unusual placement as a rare occurrence, without explaining the custom or circumstance intended.
Meaning: Someone considering a purchase should examine what is being offered rather than rely only on its appeal. The saying encourages informed questions, while leaving sellers responsible for honest descriptions and avoiding blame when deception or unequal information prevents a fair choice.
Meaning: 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.
Meaning: The saying pictures eagles gathering where a carcass is found. As an analogy, it can describe a visible gathering pointing toward the attraction that brings people together.
Meaning: Even an attentive observer cannot be assumed to notice every event. The cat-and-mouse image points to limits of oversight, without proving that an unnoticed action is harmless or acceptable.
Meaning: An observer who appears inattentive may still be aware of what is happening. The cat’s momentary wink warns against treating a brief lapse in visible attention as proof that nothing has been noticed.
Meaning: The rhyme personifies cheese as a troublesome elf that digests everything except itself. Its comic contradiction presents the food as having a power it does not extend to its own substance.
Meaning: The saying places nothing after cheese, presenting it as the end of a sequence. The wording does not explain whether the rule concerns a meal, custom or another setting.
Meaning: The saying recommends turning a cheese seven times before it cools if it is to be good and kept old. A remembered count is attached to a preparation task.
Meaning: The saying suggests that people who speak without calculated restraint may reveal what others conceal. It does not make children or people dismissed as fools automatically reliable witnesses.
Meaning: The saying pictures children and chickens continually picking at food. It groups two images of repeated small feeding into a broad claim of need.
Meaning: The saying pairs a snowless Christmas with a snowy Easter. It imagines one seasonal condition being answered by its opposite later.
Meaning: The saying predicts a severe winter when Christmas falls on a Monday. It assigns weather significance to the weekday of a calendar celebration.
Meaning: The saying opposes Pater-noster building churches to Our Father pulling them down. Two forms associated with the same prayer become symbols of contrary actions.
Meaning: Something presented as clear is actually confusing or difficult to understand. The comparison is usually ironic: mud supplies the opposite of transparency, so the phrase can gently or sharply challenge an inadequate explanation.
Meaning: An official’s work can depend heavily on the person who prepares and manages its records. The saying draws attention to expertise behind visible authority.
Meaning: Clouds seen over the hills are imagined to bring rain or low cloud down to the mills. The saying links a visible higher place with conditions expected below it.
Meaning: Mending and patching stand for practical skills that keep useful things in service. The saying values the ability to meet everyday needs, rather than guaranteeing continuous employment or blaming people who cannot find work despite having skills.
Meaning: Advice should recognise the boundaries of the adviser’s knowledge. The cobbler image cautions against extending authority beyond relevant expertise, while leaving room to learn, ask questions and contribute from experience.
Meaning: 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.
Meaning: An unpromising or reserved appearance may conceal a capacity that becomes evident under suitable conditions. The flint image encourages openness to possibility, without guaranteeing hidden talent or requiring someone to prove themselves through pressure.