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 love, including its inflections. Clear word filter
49 entries
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Love is the greatest gift of all
Love laughs at locksmiths
Love levels ranks
Love thy neighbor, but don't get caught
Love well, whip well
Old love does not rust
Old love will not be forgotten
There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons
There is a time to live and a time to die
Matching variant: There is a time to love and a time to die