proverb

 

short statement of wisdom or advice that has passed into general use. More homely than aphorisms, proverbs generally refer to common experience and are often expressed in metaphor, alliteration, or rhyme, e.g., “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “When the cat's away, the mice will play.” Proverbs abound in the Bible, in early Greek and Roman literature, and in the gnomic verse of the Anglo-Saxons. In medieval literature proverbs serve in homilies and exempla to drive home moral lessons and, as in the works of Chaucer, to add a humorous note. To the traditional folk sayings the Renaissance writers added the more literary proverbs from the classics; the most famous collection was Adagia by Erasmus (1500). Proverbs were extremely popular among the Elizabethans, the most famous collections being those of John Heywood (1549?) and Florio (1578). Although the popularity of proverbs declined in the 18th cent., they have become a subject for research and classification in more modern times. There is a famous collection by William Hazlitt (1869). Noted 20th-century compilations include The Book of Proverbs (1965), ed. by Paul Rosenzweig, and The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1970), ed. by W. G. Smith and F. P. Wilson.

For the music piece by Steve Reich see Proverb (Reich).

A proverb (from the Latin proverbium) is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim. If a proverb is distinguished by particularly good phrasing, it may be known as an aphorism.

Proverbs are often borrowed from similar languages and cultures, and sometimes come down to the present through more than one language. Both the Bible (Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs across Western Europe and even further.

Paremiology

The study of proverbs is called paremiology (from Greek paremia = proverb) and can be dated back as far as Aristotle. Paremiography, on the other hand, is the collection of proverbs. Currently, the foremost proverb scholar in the United States is Wolfgang Mieder, who defines the term proverb as follows:

"A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation.” (Mieder 1985:119; also in Mieder 1993:24)

Subgenres include proverbial expressions (“to bite the dust”), proverbial comparisons (“as busy as a bee”), proverbial interrogatives (“Does a chicken have lips?”) and twin formulas (“give and take”).

Another subcategory are wellerisms, named after Sam Weller from Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers (1837). They are constructed in a triadic manner which consists of a statement (often a proverb), an identification of a speaker (person or animal) and a phrase that places the statement into an unexpected situation. Ex.: “Every evil is followed by some good,” as the man said when his wife died the day after he became bankrupt.

Typical stylistic features of proverbs (as Shirley Arora points out in her article, The Perception of Proverbiality (1984)) are:

• alliteration (Forgive and forget)
• parallelism (Nothing ventured, nothing gained)
• rhyme (When the cat is away, the mice will play)
• ellipsis (Once bitten, twice shy)

Internal features that can be found quite frequently include :

• hyperbole (All is fair in love and war)
• paradox (The longest way around is the shortest way home)
• personification (Hunger is the best cook)

To make the respective statement more general most proverbs are based on a metaphor. Further typical features of the proverb are its shortness (average: seven words), and the fact that its author is generally unknown (otherwise it would be a quotation).

Russian Proverbs

Although all countries have their own proverbs that relate to their morals, values, and attitudes (and which are often most applicable in their own society—for example, the Nigerian proverb “a leopard hides his spots” is not going to have the same effect in Texas or Ireland), Russians in particular may claim how their older proverbs truly illustrate not only the political climate of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also the social and psychological ways that the peasants survived their political and economic oppression.

In the article “Tensions in Proverbs: More Light on International Understanding,” Joseph Raymond comments on what common Russian proverbs from the 1700s and 1800s portray: Potent antiauthoritarian proverbs reflected tensions between the Russian people and the Czar. The rollickingly malicious undertone of these folk verbalizations constitutes what might be labeled a ‘paremiological revolt.’ To avoid openly criticizing a given authority or cultural pattern, folk take recourse to proverbial expressions which voice personal tensions in a tone of generalized consent. Thus, personal involvement is linked with public opinion ^[1] Proverbs that speak to the political disgruntlement include: “When the Czar spits into the soup dish, it fairly bursts with pride”; “If the Czar be a rhymester, woe be to the poets”; and “The hen of the Czarina herself does not lay swan’s eggs.” While none of these proverbs state directly, “I hate the Czar and detest my situation” (which would have been incredibly dangerous), they do get their points across.

Raymond also argued that proverbs are important verbal instruments for minimizing interpersonal friction and tensions ^[2] His “safety-valve” hypothesis explained that proverbs are most used by lower-class persons and that within this group, expressions of anger, rebellion, and nonconformance are found frequently ^[3] These short sentences were a way of venting with one another, vastly safer than a violent expression of discontent.

In the article “Richard Pipes’s Foreign Strategy: Anti-Soviet or Anti-Russian?” Wladislaw G. Krasnow discusses how the professor’s critiques of Russian foreign policy could and in his belief was best studied from Russian proverbs, rather than from the collected works of the ‘coryphaei’ of Marxism-Leninism ^[4] Dr. Pipes offered examples such as “the tears of others are water,” “beat a Russian and he will make you a watch,” and “It is the pike’s job to keep the carps awake.” He considered these to epitomize Russian folk wisdom. They mean, respectively, "that life is hard and that to survive one must learn to take care of oneself and one’s own without wasting much thought on others,” and the world is “a ruthless fighting ground, where one either eats others or is eaten by them, where one plays either the pike or the carp” ^[5].

Other well known Russian proverbs include: “Every seed knows its time” (everything comes in time), “you will reap what you sow,” “a titmouse in the hand is better than a crane in the sky” (remarkably similar to “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”), “idleness is the mother of all vices” (similarly, “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop”), “God takes care of the one who takes care of himself,” and “chickens are counted in autumn” (“don’t count your chickens until the eggs have hatched”) (cogweb.ucla.edu). These proverbs have in common the values of diligent work, patience, and gratitude—all of which peasants would teach their children.

Spanish proverbs

Main article: Spanish proverbs

Philippine Proverbs

One country which has contributed to the worldwide repertoire of proverbs is the Philippines. With more than 120 languages in its 7,107 islands, Filipino proverbs have shaped the culture and subcultures of the people who use them. The most popular proverb is "He who does not look back from where he came from will never reach his destination."

This proverb appears in almost all the languages spoken in the country, reflecting the value of the Filipinos who have a high regard for those people who have helped them before.

See also

• Netherlandish Proverbs - a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicting over 100 Dutch proverbs of the 16th century.
• Gnomic literature

External links

• The M6 international type system of proverbs
• Wiki Project Proverbs and Sayings in Europe (ProSE) (directed by Joachim Grzega)
• LILABAR - English/Russian corpora containing multitudes of English-Russian equivalents of proverbs
• PROVERBIDIOMS - A painting by T. E. Breitenbach depicting over 300 contemporary proverbs and idioms
• African proverbs and sayings; a gateway to discussion, bibliography, and news on African proverbs

References

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