saying

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Linguistics: sentences & expressions
adage
asyndetic
asyndetically
asyndeton
backchannel
clause
coin
complex sentence
compound sentence
concessive clause
dictum
motto
phrase
proverbial
sentence
subsentence
tail
to coin a phraseidiom
Trumpism
war cry

proverb | American Dictionary

proverb
noun[ C ]
us/ˈprɑv·ərb/
literature
a short statement, usually known by many people for a long time, that gives advice or expresses some common truth:
A Chinese proverb says that the longest journey begins with a single step.

Examples of proverb

proverb
Usage is illustrated by means of texts, advertisements, cartoons, proverbs, lyrics, and interviews.
In sum, these findings provide evidence of an association between proverb comprehension and mental imagery in older children and young adults.
Participants were asked to circle the letter of the choice that best expressed the proverb's meaning.
True blue owes its origin to a proverb true blue will never stain, which alluded to the difficulty of finding a true blue dye.
The book is unusually varied, comprising poems, dialogues, personal reminiscences, chapters interlarded with proverbs, quotes from the honoree's works, and conventional papers.
The next three chapters are concerned with various forms of figurative language including metaphors and similes, idioms, and proverbs.
Hence, it remains to be determined if people's mental images of proverbs truly are associated with their own comprehension.
This proverb means that one must address the problems of the past before building the future.
This order was employed because it was thought that the story contexts contained in the comprehension task might influence the participants' images of the proverbs.
Given the similar patterns observed in mental imagery and proverb comprehension across groups, it was important to examine the relationships between the two tasks.
The language is unimaginative, there are no ambiguities or proverbs or other kinds of metaphor.
Aiding discernment of the type of situation at hand, the proverb can change the hearer's reaction to it.
This single proverb is exceptional in its positive attitude.
Many proverbs were recorded by two or three whistlers.
The particular exchange of proverbs above begins to mean more to the reader who realises that the exchange is really about social status and respect.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.