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 work, including its inflections. Clear word filter
29 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
All things work together for good
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
If it's not broke, don't fix it
Matching variant: If it works don't fix it
Many hands make light work
A woman's work is never done
The harder you work, the luckier you get
Never work with children or animals
The devil finds work for idle hands
Hard work never killed anyone
It works if you work it
The hardest work is to go idle
The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary
Time works wonders
Work expands to fill the time available
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
A good beginning is half the work
Don't send a boy to do a man's job
Matching variant: Don't send a boy to do a man's work
He that will not work shall not eat
If you want something done, ask a busy person
Matching variant: If you want work well done, select a busy man