Knowledge.

Meaning: The saying ranks temperance as the best medicine. It gives moderation a medicinal role and places it above other means without supplying a measured comparison.

Meaning: Experience of a wrongdoing may help someone recognise how it happens. The saying values relevant knowledge but needs limits on how that knowledge is used.

Meaning: Those who shape plans can gain power over those who carry them out. The saying draws attention to a division of authority, while oversimplifying the thinking involved in practical work.

Meaning: The saying treats December thunder as a sign of fine weather ahead. An unusual event is assigned a reassuring predictive meaning.

Meaning: A task benefits from attention to the skills it requires. The saying favours relevant expertise but should not prevent someone learning beyond their present occupation.

Meaning: Encountering unfamiliar places and ways of life can broaden understanding. The saying values experience beyond familiar surroundings, without guaranteeing insight from distance or making travel the only route to learning.

Meaning: The saying predicts opposite growth from setting trees poor or rich. It recommends the apparently less favourable start and warns against the apparently richer one.

Meaning: The saying treats widespread agreement as proof of truth. A careful reading questions that shortcut and asks what evidence supports the shared claim.

Meaning: The truth of a matter may be difficult to reach. The well pictures knowledge lying below the readily visible surface.

Meaning: Real events can be more surprising than invented stories. An unusual account should not be dismissed merely for seeming unlikely, but it still needs evidence before being accepted as true.

Meaning: The saying welcomes truth and the clarity represented by daylight. It values bringing matters into view, while leaving room for privacy, considerate timing and a fair way to establish what is actually true.

Meaning: The rhyme urges truthfulness with a doctor and lawyer whatever one does or says. It connects helpful professional understanding with an honest account.

Meaning: The saying regards twenty as no worse than nineteen. It suggests that a small additional amount may make little difference in a situation already being considered.

Meaning: Two people thinking together may find an answer that one person misses. Different observations and checking each other’s reasoning can improve a decision.

Meaning: Poor instruction can leave someone with mistakes that need to be unlearned. The saying warns about teaching quality rather than making ignorance an ideal.

Meaning: The rhyme promises protection for the rest of the body when head and feet are kept warm. It makes attention to two parts appear sufficient to prevent all other harm.

Meaning: Lacking one specialised skill does not mean lacking sound judgement. Assess someone’s understanding in the relevant situation rather than treating an unfamiliar technical task as a complete test of wisdom.

Meaning: The phrase calls something water bewitched. In the checked historical account, it disparages weak beer or other liquor as little more than transformed water.

Meaning: We may overlook a useful resource while it is reliably available. Losing it can reveal how much our daily life depended on it.

Meaning: Preparation can make later work easier. The dug well pictures a foundation that must exist before a routine operation can produce its result.

Meaning: The saying gives the sweetest water to wells that are well drawn. It links the manner of obtaining a resource with the quality imagined to result.

Meaning: A question about why invites a reasoned explanation. The saying expresses confidence that events or choices have something to account for them.

Meaning: The saying recommends choosing a wife on Saturday rather than Sunday. A qualified reading favours seeing ordinary life instead of judging someone only in a special setting.

Meaning: The saying discourages fishing during a north wind. Its instruction makes wind direction the reason an outing is judged unpromising.