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 lie, including its inflections. Clear word filter
24 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
let sleeping dogs lie
To avoid raising an old issue that could cause trouble.
Home is where the heart is
Matching variant: Home is where the heart lies
Relax and enjoy it
Matching variant: You might as well lie back and enjoy it
You never know what will happen
Matching variant: You never know what lies around the corner
The camera doesn't lie
Dead men tell no tales
Matching variant: Dead men tell no lies
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Play it as it lays
Matching variant: Play it as it lies
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics
Figures don't lie
Figures don't lie, but liars figure
A lie can travel around the world
Facts don't lie
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used