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 ask, including its inflections. Clear word filter
15 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies
If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it
If you have to ask, you won't understand
It costs nothing to ask
It's easier to get forgiveness than permission
Matching variant: It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used