From antiquity to the present day, proverbs have formed an important part of oral culture. So deeply are they embedded in our habits of thought and speech that we take them largely for granted, focusing on their existence only, say, when we wish to find in our own linguistic usages something comparable to the oral formulaic tradition. Tied to no particular class or social group, proverbs embody a popular wisdom, based on the assumption of a common, shared experience, endlessly to be repeated and renewed. Absorbing proverbs as part of the native tongue, we later discover at one and the same time their aptness for the individual situations of our own lives and the comforting assurance that such situations have been similarly experienced by countless others. Individual experience is thus both sustained by the recognition of this pool of common experience to which the proverbs testify, and itself contributes to its increase, justifying the proverbs anew. The force of a proverbial formulation, therefore, derives in the last resort from its appeal to experience; even if it is a particular system of thought or belief that throws up an axiom or exhortation in the first place, its proverbial form assumes its enfranchisement from such a system, its transfer to a realm where its only support is the speaker’s willingness to match it with experience and find justification for its use. - [Author]

Language: English

DOI: 10.2307/468777