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 out, including its inflections. Clear word filter
47 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
It's a jungle out there
Garbage in, garbage out
The truth is out there
Reach out and touch someone
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen
The sun will come out tomorrow
The truth will out
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Out of the frying pan into the fire
Turn on, tune in, drop out
Last in, first out
Making a way out of no way
When in doubt, throw it out
Lead, follow, or get out of the way
Murder will out
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
The more you put into something, the more you get out
Things have a way of working out
You can't get blood out of a turnip
The nail that sticks up must be hammered down
Matching variant: The nail that sticks out gets pounded
When in doubt, leave it out
Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out
Out of evil comes good
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without
Don't dish it out if you can't take it
Keep your nose out of other people's business
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Assume makes an ass of you and me
Matching variant: Assume makes an ass out of you and me