when in rome, do as the romans do
Meaning
Follow the local customs when you are in an unfamiliar place.
Usage frequency
Less common · 9 corpus occurrences
Recorded for “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” in COCA, searched on 2016-06-03.
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
“I don't usually nap midday, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
When to use it
Used when accepting an unfamiliar local custom; the saying is often shortened to “when in Rome”.
The image behind the saying
Advice once given about respecting Roman customs while visiting.