nda and Roger Flavell combine wit and wisdom with a sharp eye for oddities... A browser’s paradise.’ THE TABLET dictionary of DICTIONARY OF PROVERBS Linda Flavell completed a first degree in modern languages and has subsequent qualifications in both secondary and primary teaching. She has worked as an English teacher both in England and overseas, and more recently as a librarian in secondary schools and as a writer. She has written three simplified readers for overseas students and co-authored, with her husband, Current English Usage for Papermac and several dictionaries of etymologies for Kyle Cathie. Roger Flavell’s Master's thesis was on the nature of idiomaticity and his doctoral research on idioms and their teaching in several European languages. On taking up a post as Lecturer in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, he travelled very widely in pursuit of his principal interests in education and training language teachers. In more recent years, he was concerned with education and international development, and with online education. He also worked as an independent educational consultant. He died in November 2005. By the same authors Dictionary o f Idioms and their Origins Dictionary o f Word Origins Dictionary o f English down the Ages DICTIONARY OF PROVERBS and their Origins L in d a and R o g er F lavell Kyle Books This edition reprinted in 2011 by Kyle Books 23 Howland Street London W IT 4AY [email protected] www.kylebooks.com First published in Great Britain in 1993 by Kyle Cathie Limited ISBN 978-1-85626-563-8 © 1993 Linda and Roger Flavell All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. Linda and Roger Flavell are hereby identified as the authors of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A Cataloguing in Publication record for this title is available from the British Library. Printed at Gopsons Papers Ltd., Noida INTRODUCTION A proverb has three characteristics: few words, good sense, and a fine image (Moses Ibn Ezra, Shirat Yisrael, 1924) For thousands of years proverbs have been amongst us. For example, a major early collection is the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. It is in fact a collection of collections, which reached its final edited form in about the fifth century bc. However, many of the individual sayings within it date, according to scholars, to at least the seventh century bc. From this and other early beginnings, proverbs have always had a strong hold on cultures throughout the world. Each language has its own treasuries of folk sayings. For British collections, see An accumulation of wisdom (page 108); and for one of the greatest and most influential collections, see Erasmus's Adagia (page 8). Why is it that proverbs have exercised such a fascination over millennia? Moses Ibn Ezra's definition provides an explanation. Above all, they offer good sense. Proverbs are guidelines for life, based on the collective folk wisdom of the people. Such riches are eagerly sought after at any age in mankind's development. They are also pithily, even wittily, and always memorably phrased, as a result of a refining process that often takes them through various versions before they reach their polished final form. They are The wisdom of many and the wit of one. Many have tried to define a proverb; some of their efforts are gathered in What is a proverb? (page 3). This book responds to the interest in proverbs by providing information both for reference purposes and for the browser. BROWSING It might be Ezra's 'fine image' of the language, it might be a fascination with customs of past ages, it might be a love of life and of wisdom - whatever the attraction to a book on proverbs, we have taken great pains to please the browser. The entries have been selected because they have a tale to tell. There are many more that could have been included but we hope that we have provided a satisfying cross-section of the vast range of proverbs that occur in English, even if we cannot claim it to be a comprehensive list. The etymology (or etymologies, since there are sometimes alternative accounts) tries to go back to the earliest origins. We endeavour to give dates, although it is often impossible to do this with any confidence. As proverbs are folk wisdom, Vi •INTRODUCTION passed down in the oral tradition from generation to generation, the first written record (even if we can specify that with any certainty) is likely to be a poor indication of the saying's actual origin. This is an important reservation to bear in mind when for brevity in an entry we say something like 'This is the earliest use'. What we do have sometimes is the wit of one that reflects the previous wisdom of many, such as Shakespeare's Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Pope's To err is human, to forgive divine, and so on. We have done our utmost to be precise about the dates of quotations, both in the etymology and in the quotation sections, in order to show the development of the saying, in form, meaning and use. There are real difficulties with many works, and in each case we have chosen what seems to be an appropriate solution. For example, we have followed the Oxford English Dictionary dates for Shakespeare's plays; given the last edition (1536) that Erasmus himself produced of his Adagia; used one date for the Canterbury Tales, even though they were written over fourteen years or so; and so on. Proverbs mainly come from worlds that are far removed from our contemporary civilisation. Where necessary, we have offered information on the context of the saying, within the entry itself or within one of the boxes or essays throughout the book. For example, an explanation of the unpopularity of the medieval baker comes in Pull devil, pull baker; the place of the devil in the popular mind is developed more fully in The devil to pay (page 66). On occasions we have gone beyond the general cultural context to events surrounding the use of proverbs. For a tale of skulduggery in the highest places, follow the sad tale of Sir Thomas Overbury and the dubious activities of James I in No news is good news and Beauty is only skin deep. The essays and boxes strategically situated throughout the book (usually near entries on a connected theme) are of various kinds - cultural, linguistic or just plain curious. They are designed to reflect the riches and diversity of proverb lore. REFERENCE Each saying dealt with in the body of the book is listed alphabetically in relation to a key word within it. As proverbs are usually whole sentences and not single words, there is necessarily a choice to be made regarding the main word. We have exercised our judgement as to which is the key word (normally a noun or a verb) but, in case our intuitions do not coincide with the reader's, we have provided an index of all the important words in each saying at the back of the book. The proverb itself is followed by a definition, giving the contemporary meaning. This is often necessary because the sense, after a long history of slowly changing use, may not be immediately clear. Common variants are given in another section, and occasional notes on formality and informality, connotations, grammatical peculi­ arities and so on are found under Usage. INTRODUCTION • vii Many entries are complete with one or more illustrative quotations - a further guide to usage, as well as an illustration of the proverb's development. Quotations are listed in chronological order and the more recent provide a taste of modem authors. Their mainly allusive reference to proverbs, presuming that the reader will recognise the reference to the expression, is rather different from the direct quoting of the full saying in earlier times. We have drawn on a very wide range of sources for the quotations, but the great majority of the contemporary illustrations are from our eclectic reading - a genuine serendipity, with no claims to be systematic or comprehensive! The bibliography is there both to show our sources and to provide a point of extended reference. It is only a selective list. To have included all the thousands of sources we referred to would have made the bibliography unmanageable. In the text of the book we usually refer to an author just by name (e.g. Walsh). Full details are in the Bibliography. If there is the possibility of confusion because the author has more than one entry, the name is followed by the date of publication of the relevant book. Our thanks are due to the various libraries we have extensively consulted: our local library in Sussex, The University of London Library and, above all, the British Library, without which it would not have been possible to write a book like this. Our indebtedness is even greater to scholars who have preceded us in the field. The Subject of the proverbs has benefited from the herculean labours of many. Lean, for example, devoted over fifty years of his life to his monumental collection of 1902-4.