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 own, including its inflections. Clear word filter
28 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
The life you save may be your own
You break it, you own it
Water seeks its own level
Virtue is its own reward
Paddle your own canoe
Pick on someone your own size
The heart has a mind of its own
Everyone has their own opinion
A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country
Clean up your own backyard
Hoe your own row
The best way to rob a bank is to own one
The devil looks after his own
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used