Words worth understanding
Start with the thought in plain English. Then explore the imagery, a practical example, when to use it, and what the saying does not mean.
4,000 entries with editorial explanations. The wider collection also contains entries still awaiting an individual interpretation.
proverb · Traditional
A small weight of love valued above a large weight of law contrasts care with formal regulation. The saying gives affection moral importance through an exaggerated measure.
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Smoke, a leaking roof and a shouting wife grouped as reasons to leave home place a partner alongside practical household difficulties. The saying presents a gendered complaint.
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A son’s bond ending with marriage but a daughter’s lasting for life contrasts family roles by gender. The saying presents loyalty as unequal and fixed.
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This saying presents beating a woman as a way to improve her behaviour, alongside beating an animal or tree. It expresses an abusive viewpoint, not a valid instruction for relationships or care.
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A wife chosen for virtue and a concubine for beauty divides women into roles with different selection criteria. The saying expresses an instrumental, gendered relationship hierarchy.
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A woman as a garden flower and a husband as its fence gives marriage an image of beauty and protection. The saying assigns the two partners unequal roles.
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A stepchild blamed both for not washing and for using water portrays a person condemned whichever choice they make. The saying exposes incompatible standards rather than a real fault in the child.
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Distance may weaken a mild attachment while making an intense one feel stronger. The contrast between cooling and inflaming describes different possible responses to absence, rather than a dependable rule for measuring love or deciding how relationships should work.
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The saying claims that everything is fair in love and war. It portrays powerful aims as reasons to suspend ordinary limits on conduct.
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The saying makes love the essential need. It gives affection and care priority through an absolute claim that leaves other needs unmentioned.
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The saying suspends ordinary fairness in love and war. It presents intense aims or conflict as an excuse for otherwise questionable means.
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A harmful partnership can create repeated difficulties in daily life. The spring image makes one troubled relationship a source from which other problems flow.
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The saying compares a woman’s tears with a goose’s bare feet, making her distress seem ordinary or unworthy of sympathy. It expresses dismissiveness, not a reason to disregard someone’s feelings.
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A shared life benefits from considering practical arrangements beforehand. The house pictures a place and means for the partnership to live.
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Beauty superficial but ugliness reaching bone gives a harsh asymmetry to judgments of appearance. The saying intensifies a negative label rather than fairly assessing conduct.
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The phrase imagines beer as a pair of goggles. It humorously describes attraction being perceived differently while someone has been drinking.
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A partner’s qualities matter more than the wealth attached to them. The contrast between fortune in and on a person redirects attention from possessions to character.
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The saying exaggerates the misery of an unhappy marriage by comparing it with severe punishment. It stresses the importance of a workable relationship, while rejecting the idea that either violence or lasting distress must be accepted.
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The saying values having experienced love, even when lost, above never having loved. It gives a past connection worth despite the pain of its ending.
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Blood emphatically distinguished from water gives kinship or shared ties an image of special significance. The short saying values a bond through a familiar contrast.
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Caring for children brings responsibilities, while the comfort a parent hopes to receive from them cannot be guaranteed. The saying contrasts present duties with uncertain future expectations, rather than defining children as a debt owed to adults.
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Children are presented as a form of wealth that cannot be measured in money. The saying values family relationships amid limited resources, but it should not romanticise poverty, impose parenthood or treat children as possessions or compensation for hardship.
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Choosing a wife for oneself rather than others gives an intimate decision independence from outside approval. The saying values personal judgment within gendered wording.
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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.
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