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 man, including its inflections. Clear word filter
73 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Stand by your man
Ecce homo!
Matching variant: Behold the man!
A good man is hard to find
Clothes make the man
You've got to do what you've got to do
Matching variant: A man's got to do what a man's got to do
A man's home is his castle
No man is above the law
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
The way to a man's heart is through his stomach
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle
One man's meat is another man's poison
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
Everybody has a price
Matching variant: Every man has a price
Time waits for no one
Matching variant: Time waits for no man
A man is a man
His word is his bond
Matching variant: A man's word is his bond
Man does not live by bread alone
The proper study of mankind is Man
You can't blame a guy for trying
Matching variant: You can't blame a man for trying
Go West, young man, go West!
One man's trash is another man's treasure
You can't keep a good man down
The child is father to the man
A dog is man's best friend
Behind every great man there's a great woman
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise
Give a man enough rope, and he'll hang himself
Man proposes, God disposes
Man shall not live by bread alone
No man is a hero to his valet
You can't con a con
Matching variant: You can't con a con man
A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country
Matching variant: No man is a prophet in his own country