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 even, including its inflections. Clear word filter
13 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Even paranoids have enemies
Never give a sucker an even break
Don't get mad, get even
Behind every great man there's a great woman
Matching variant: Behind every great man there's an even greater woman
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut
Even a dead cat will bounce
There's honor among thieves
Matching variant: There is honor even among thieves
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
A fighting Frenchman runs away from even a she-goat
Don't get mad, get ahead
Matching variant: Don't get mad, don't get even, get ahead
Even the longest day has its end
Heroes often fail
Matching variant: Even heroes fail