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
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Go hunting where the ducks are
Go while the going is good
If you would have your business done, go; if not, send
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven
Matching variant: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
Let go; let God
Start as you mean to go
The hardest work is to go idle
When it's time to go, it's time to go
You only go around once in life
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used