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 up, including its inflections. Clear word filter
35 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Don't give up the ship
Pack up your troubles
A hand up, not a handout
Life has its ups and downs
Pick yourself up and dust yourself off
Make up, don't break up
The nail that sticks up must be hammered down
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without
You get knocked down, you get up
A bad penny always comes back
Matching variant: A bad penny always turns up
Clean up your own backyard
Don't go down without a fight
Matching variant: Don't give up without a fight
Eighty percent of life is showing up
In war there is no prize for runner-up
It's not the crime but the cover-up
It's what's up front that counts
Keep your sunny side up
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Age is a high price to pay for maturity
Matching variant: Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up
Be nice to people on your way up, because you'll meet them on your way down
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up
First up, best dressed
Haste trips up its own heels
If you don't know where you are going, you might not get there
Matching variant: If you don't know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else