1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Proverb

PROVERB (Lat. proverbium, from pro, forth, publicly, verbum, word; the Greek equivalent is παροιμίαι, from παρά, alongside, and ομἶος, way, road, i.e. a wayside saying; Ger. Sprichwort), a form of folk-literature, or its later imitation, expressing, in the form of a simple, homely sentence, a pungent criticism of life. Many definitions have been attempted of a “ proverb,” of which none has met with universal acceptance. J. Howell's (d. 1666) three essentials, “ shortness, sense and salt,” omit the chief characteristic, popularity or general acceptance, and the definition of Erasmus—Celebre dictum scita quapiam novitate insigne—suits a good proverb rather than proverbs in general. Lord Russell's “ The wisdom of many and the wit of one ” is familiar.

For a general survey of the subject of proverbs, Archbishop Trench's Proverbs and their Lessons (new ed., 1905, by A. Smythe-Palmer, with additions and notes) is useful; it contains a fairly comprehensive bibliography, ancient and modern. Bohn's Handbook of Proverbs, and Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs (1857), based on the collections of John Ray (1670) and David Ferguson (1641), are very full. V. Stuckey Lean's Collectanea (5 vols.) 1902 is a storehouse of English proverbs, classified in various ways; Notes and Queries, 9th series (1898), vol. ii., contains a bibliography of English works. The principal foreign works are G. Stratforello, La Sapienza del mondo (3 vols., 1883) and Reinsberg and Düringsfeld, Die Sprichwörter der germanischen und romanischen Sprachen (2 vols., 1872–1875). There are many popular handbooks giving full collections of proverbs, English and foreign.