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
The saying imagines February filling ditches with dark rainwater or white snow and favours the white form. It assigns value to contrasting winter conditions.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
February is pictured as building an icy bridge that March breaks. The months become makers and destroyers of a temporary winter crossing.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying gives being first an advantage described as being best dressed. In the supplied reading, early arrival or action can secure a preferred position.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The phrase uses donkey’s ages to emphasise a very long time. It gives duration an exaggerated animal-associated form.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Knowing about a possible difficulty beforehand gives you a chance to prepare. A useful warning can change how you act instead of leaving you to respond unready.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Fortune compared with variable olive abundance pictures changing circumstances. The saying contrasts plentiful periods with times of little or nothing.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying predicts failure for a voyage begun on Friday. The rhyme treats a weekday as an unlucky condition without establishing a causal connection.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying calls friends thieves of time. It presents social attention as taking time that could be spent elsewhere.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying makes friendship like money: easier to gain than retain. It gives maintaining a connection a different challenge from beginning one.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The rhyme takes frogs croaking in a lagoon as a sign of rain soon. Sound becomes the cue for its short-term forecast.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
A day’s journey from promise to deed gives a commitment and its fulfilment a distance between them. It distinguishes saying something from completing it.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional (French-language collection)
Repeatedly moving a task to tomorrow allows considerable time to pass. Notice the pattern of postponement and choose a concrete next step rather than another indefinite promise.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Care with resources now may make later life less burdensome. The easy chair pictures comfort made possible by earlier restraint.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Fishing hours not deducted from life imagines a pleasurable activity outside ordinary mortality. The saying gives leisure a playful blessing.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
God never hurried and always present at the proper time expresses confidence in divine timing. The saying gives patience a religious assurance.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Good work and quick completion can be difficult to combine when the task needs care. The saying asks whether speed is compromising the result, without making slow work automatically good or prompt work automatically careless.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying makes good company the shortest cut on a road. It values companionship as a way to make a journey feel less burdensome.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying welcomes October wind for bringing acorns and mast within a hog’s reach. It judges a seasonal force through the provision it is imagined to supply.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying promises good things to people who wait. It encourages patience when a result has not yet arrived.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying associates good results with time taken to develop them. It encourages patience rather than expecting every worthwhile thing immediately.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Do not take on more than you can manage at once. Match commitments to actual capacity instead of treating every available opportunity as something you must accept.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
Grey hair is used as an image of ageing and the passing of life. Calling it death’s blossoms makes a visible change resemble a sign of an approaching season.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The rhyme makes great haste produce great waste. It intensifies a warning about rushing through work without enough care.
Read the explanation and example ↗proverb · Traditional
The saying pairs a snowless Christmas with a snowy Easter. It imagines one seasonal condition being answered by its opposite later.
Read the explanation and example ↗