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 time, including its inflections. Clear word filter
53 entries
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Don't kill time
Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time
Nothing happens until it happens
Matching variant: Nothing happens before its time
One cannot be in two places at once
Matching variant: One cannot be in two places at the same time
One fence at a time
There is a time to live and a time to die
Time and chance happen to all men
Time hangs heavy on one's hands
Time is a great equalizer
Time is a great teacher
Time is an herb that cures all diseases
Time wasted is time lost
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time
You can eat an elephant - one bite at a time
You can't hit a home run every time
You move, you lose
Matching variant: Every time you move, you lose