A proverb is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbial expression is a type of a conventional saying similar to proverbs and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. Collectively, they form a genre of folklore.
Alan Dundes was an American folklorist. He spent much of his career as a professional academic at the University of California, Berkeley and published his ideas in a wide range of books and articles.
Wellerisms, named after sayings of Sam Weller in Charles Dickens's novel The Pickwick Papers, make fun of established clichés and proverbs by showing that they are wrong in certain situations, often when taken literally. In this sense, Wellerisms that include proverbs are a type of anti-proverb. Typically a Wellerism consists of three parts: a proverb or saying, a speaker, and an often humorously literal explanation.
An anti-proverb or a perverb is the transformation of a standard proverb for humorous effect. Paremiologist Wolfgang Mieder defines them as "parodied, twisted, or fractured proverbs that reveal humorous or satirical speech play with traditional proverbial wisdom". Anti-proverbs are ancient, Aristophanes having used one in his play Peace, substituting κώẟων "bell" for κύων "bitch, female dog", twisting the standard and familiar "The hasty bitch gives birth to blind" to "The hasty bellfinch gives birth to blind".
Paremiology is the collection and study of paroemias (proverbs). It is a subfield of both philology and linguistics.
Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, also known as Łužičan, Jakub Bart Kukowski, was Sorbian poet, writer and playwright, translator of Czech, Polish, Italian and German literature. He produced his works in Upper Sorbian. He is also an inventor of modern Upper Sorbian poetic language. He has been described as "the classical writer of Sorbian literature."
Netherlandish Proverbs is a 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts a scene in which humans and, to a lesser extent, animals and objects, offer literal illustrations of Dutch-language proverbs and idioms.
Wayland Debs Hand was an American folklorist.
Matti Akseli Kuusi was a Finnish folklorist, paremiographer and paremiologist. He wrote several books and a number of articles on Finnish folklore. He was the first to have introduced the type system of proverbs similar to the Aarne–Thompson classification system of folklore, the Matti Kuusi international type system of proverbs. With encouragement from Archer Taylor he founded the journal Proverbium: Bulletin d'Information sur les Recherches Parémiologiques, published from 1965 to 1975 by the Society for Finnish Literature, which was later restarted as Proverbium: International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship. He was a member of the noble family Granfelt, but his father had fennicized his original Swedish surname to express his political sympathies.
Paremiography is the study of the collection and writing of proverbs. A recent introduction to the field has been written by Tamás Kispál. It is a sub-field of paremiology, the study of proverbs.
Proverbidioms is a 1975 oil painting by American artist T. E. Breitenbach depicting over 300 common proverbs, catchphrases, and clichés such as "You are what you eat", "a frog in the throat", and "kicked the bucket". It is painted on a 45 by 67 inch wooden panel and was completed in 1975 after two years work, when the artist was 24. The included sayings are painted quite literally and appear comical and bizarre, especially if one does not at first realize what the painting is about. For example, "You are what you eat" is represented in the painting by a carrot eating a carrot. The painting also contains hidden social commentary, and a reference to Pieter Bruegel the Elder who did a 1559 painting of Dutch proverbs. The title Proverbidioms is a simple portmanteau word combining "proverb" with "idioms".
Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship is an academic journal covering paremiology, the study of proverbs. Each volume includes articles on proverbs and proverbial expressions, book reviews, a bibliography of recent proverb scholarship, and a list of recently (re)published proverb collections.
The Durham Proverbs is a collection of 46 mediaeval proverbs from various sources. They were written down as a collection, in the eleventh century, on some pages of a manuscript that were originally left blank. The manuscript is currently in the collection of Durham Cathedral, to which it was donated in the eighteenth century. The Proverbs form the first part of the manuscript. The second part, to which it is bound, is a copy of Ælfric's Grammar. Each proverb is written in both Latin and Old English, with the former preceding the latter. Olof Arngart's opinion is that the Proverbs were originally in Old English and translated to Latin, but this has since been disputed in a conference paper by T. A. Shippey.
The expression cart before the horse is an idiom or proverb used to suggest something is done contrary to the natural or normally effective sequence of events. A cart is a vehicle that is ordinarily pulled by a horse, so to put the cart before the horse is an analogy for doing things in the wrong order. The figure of speech means doing things the wrong way round or with the wrong emphasis or confusing cause and effect.
Arvo Krikmann was an Estonian academician, folklorist, linguist, paremiologist, and humour researcher. He may be best known as a proverb scholar, “one of the leading paremiologists in the world.”
Archer Taylor was one of America's "foremost specialists in American and European folklore", with a special interest in cultural history, literature, proverbs, riddles and bibliography.
Elisabeth Piirainen,, was a German linguist and philologist. After studying linguistics in Münster, Amsterdam, and Helsinki, she received her PhD in 1970 at the University of Münster. Afterwards she worked as an editor for German Language at the University of Jyväskylä located in central Finland. In 1963 she met the Finnish scholar of German language, Ilpo Tapani Piirainen, and married him in 1967. Since 1975, she was in charge of various projects related to Low German philology. From 2006 to 2010 she was a member of the Scientific Council of the European Society of Phraseology (Europhras). She has been an active scholar in phraseology, with a broad European scope. Fifty of her publications related to proverbs are listed by Wolfgang Mieder in his two-volume bibliography on paremiology and phraseology.
Anna T. Litovkina is a Russian-born Hungarian linguist, a psychologist and a coach.
Romanistan, Romastan or Romanestan is the name of a proposed country for the Romani people.
Jennifer Speake, néeDrake-Brockman is a Canadian-British freelance writer and editor of reference books.
