great minds think alike
Meaning
Usage frequency
Common · 12 corpus occurrences
Recorded for “Great minds think alike” in COCA, searched on 2016-05-03.
About these frequency groups
Groups use full-form occurrence counts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), recorded in 2016–2017. For a proverb with several forms, we use the highest individual count, since adding overlapping forms could count the same occurrence twice.
These are historical American English corpus counts, not estimates of how often everyone uses a saying today. A zero means no full-form match was recorded. The source’s separate familiarity ratings are retained in the data but do not determine this ordering.
We grouped variants, merged reviewed duplicate entries, and preserved existing editorial wording. The source includes historical and dated sayings; inclusion is not an endorsement.
In a conversation
“You ordered the same pizza as me — great minds think alike!”
When to use it
Usually said playfully when someone has the same idea or makes the same choice as you.
The image behind the saying
The proverb claims that clever people tend to reach the same conclusions, often used humorously about trivial coincidences.