English in everyday life
Proverbs
Explore English sayings from most to least frequent in a published American English corpus. Alternate forms are collected together.
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.
Expressions containing go, including its inflections. Clear word filter
70 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
what goes around comes around
good or bad actions return to their author
The show must go on
The beat goes on
A little goes a long way
No good deed goes unpunished
Go for the gold
Easy come, easy go
You can't go home again
Go along to get along
What goes up must come down
Go big or go home
Pride goeth before a fall
Matching variant: Pride goes before a fall
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
Matching variant: What goes on in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Wherever you go, there you are
Love makes the world go round
If anything can go wrong, it will
To the victor go the spoils
Money makes the world go round
Don't go looking for trouble
Go West, young man, go West!
As Maine goes, so goes the nation
Get along and go along
Go hard or go home
Go with what you've got
Never let a crisis go to waste
Once you go black, you never go back
Only dead fish go with the flow
Sell in May and go away
Chacun ? son go?t
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Matching variant: Fools rush in where wise men never go