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 two, including its inflections. Clear word filter
29 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
One step forward, two steps back
Two can play at that game
Two can live as cheaply as one
Old friends are the best friends
Matching variant: An old friend is better than two new ones
By diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable
It takes two to make a deal
No man can serve two masters
Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead
Two's company; three's a crowd
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Every argument has two sides
If you can't ride two horses at once, you shouldn't be in the circus
If you have two quarterbacks, you don't have one
It takes two to make a bargain
It takes two to make a couple
It takes two to make love
It takes two to quarrel
Number two tries harder
One cannot be in two places at once
The first five years are the hardest
Matching variant: The first two years are the hardest