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 word, including its inflections. Clear word filter
19 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
His word is his bond
One picture is worth a thousand words
Sticks and stones may break my bones
Matching variant: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me
A word to the wise is sufficient
The Greeks had a word for it
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver
Facts speak louder than words
Many a true word is spoken in jest
There is no such word as can't
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used