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 first, including its inflections. Clear word filter
31 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
First impressions are important
Last in, first out
Last hired, first fired
Today is the first day of the rest of your life
See America first
You never get a second chance to make a first impression
Truth is the first casualty of war
Act first and think later
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive
You can't steal first base
Baby steps first
Clean up your own backyard
Matching variant: Clean up your own backyard first
First impressions are lasting
Second place is first loser
Self-preservation is the first law of nature
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used