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 day, including its inflections. Clear word filter
28 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Save for a rainy day
Today is the first day of the rest of your life
Every dog has its day
Another day, another dollar
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day
Same shit, different day
Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug
Matching variant: Some days you're the windshield, and some days you're the bug
Whatever gets you through the night
Matching variant: Whatever gets you through the day
Any day above ground is a good day
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime
Some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue
Sometimes the dragon wins
Matching variant: Some days the dragon wins
Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you
Matching variant: Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used