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 give, including its inflections. Clear word filter
23 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Don't give up the ship
A hand up, not a handout
Matching variant: Give a hand up, not a handout
Never give a sucker an even break
Give respect, get respect
Take what the defense gives you
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Matching variant: Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come
Give a man enough rope, and he'll hang himself
Respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education
Silence gives consent
Don't go down without a fight
Matching variant: Don't give up without a fight
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime
God gives all things to industry
Take what life gives you
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used