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 got, including its inflections. Clear word filter
19 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
I've got friends
In it to win it
Matching variant: You've got to be in it to win it
You've got to eat
Go along to get along
Matching variant: You've got to go along to get along
If you've got it, flaunt it
You've got to do what you've got to do
Work with what you have
Matching variant: Work with what you've got
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
You have to live with yourself
Matching variant: You've got to live with yourself
Everybody has to start somewhere
Matching variant: Everybody's got to start somewhere
Go with what you've got
When you've got to go, you've got to go
It's not what you've got, it's what you do with it
Smoke them if you've got them
When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose
Matching variant: When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
A man's got to do what a man's got to do; a woman must do what he can't
Excuses are like assholes, everybody's got one
Grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow
Matching variant: If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow