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 better, including its inflections. Clear word filter
60 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
better late than never
Doing something after a delay is better than not doing it at all.
Better safe than sorry
The bigger the better
Better luck next time
Two heads are better than one
The less said the better
It is better to give than to receive
Bigger is not always better
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Some things are better left unsaid
Things will get worse before they get better
Prevention is better than cure
Anything is better than nothing
Discretion is the better part of valor
It's better to be lucky than good
Best is not good enough
Matching variant: Better is not good enough
Some things are better left alone
Better dead than Red
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness
Half a loaf is better than none
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
Better Red than dead
Better the devil you know than the one you don't
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door
It is better to be feared than loved
Behind every great man there's a great woman
Matching variant: Behind every great man is a better woman
It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
It's easier to get forgiveness than permission
Matching variant: It is better to ask forgiveness than permission
Old friends are the best friends
Matching variant: An old friend is better than two new ones
A long shot is better than no shot
Anything boys can do girls can do better
It is better to look good than to feel good
Strong and wrong beats weak and right
Matching variant: Better to be strong and wrong than weak and right
The less government we have, the better
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used