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 count, including its inflections. Clear word filter
12 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Every little bit helps
Matching variant: Every little bit counts
Size doesn't matter
Matching variant: Size doesn't matter; it's how you use it that counts
It's the thought that counts
It's not what you know, it's who you know
Matching variant: It's not what you know, it's who you know that counts
It's what's inside that counts
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
don't count your chickens before they hatch
used to warn someone not to assume success before it actually happens