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 play, including its inflections. Clear word filter
23 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
Play it as it lays
No pass, no play
Two can play at that game
You play the cards you are dealt
It isn't whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game
God doesn't play dice
No pay, no play
You can't win if you don't play
If you play with fire you're going to get burnt
Trying is not enough
Matching variant: Playing hard is not enough
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used