Reaiews

rr7

RONALD R. BUTTERS is a past editor of AmErican Speech and PADS. He is also a

former president of the American Dialect Society, southeastern conference
on Linguistics, and International Association of Forensic Linguists. lle was a
professor (now emeritus) at Duke University, 1967-zoo7, where he taught
courses in the English Department, the cultural Anthropology Deparrment,
and the Linguistics Program. since r gBo, he has submitted
3oo+ reports and
testified 6o+ times in legal proceedings, mostly about meanings of worcls.
,He and his spouse of'35 years, Stewart Aycock, make their home with their
chihuahua in Naples, Florida. E-mail: ronbutters@icloud.com.

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PRESENT AT THE CREATION, PROVERBIALLY

The

Dictionary

of

Modern Prouerbs

Compiled by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Miedeq and Fred R. Shapiro

New Haven, Conn.: Yale University press, zor z. pp. xiv + 294.
ISBN 978-o-3oo-r 36oz-9; $35.oo
Reviewed by
IETE UNSETH, C,raduate Institute of Applied Linguistics

Many collections of English proverbs exist, but as has repeatedly been

observed, these are always out of date, being largely based on old sources,
preserving and presenting many proverbs that have fallen out of use. Though
new proverbs are being coined constantly, they are not added quickly to

the "canonical" proverb collections. so Archer Taylor asked, "How nearly

complete are the collections of proverbs?" (rg6g).\A/hiting published Mod_
ern Prouerbs and Proaerbial sayings in r98g, drawing largely from proverbs
he encountered in his vast reading, but that was a compilation of proverbs
then in use, not necessarily new proverbs. The volume under review fills a
gap fbr us by recording for the first time many twentieth-centufy proverb
creations.
Each proverb included in this volume was first documented fr,rrr r gocr
or later, into the twenty-first century. For instance, "If it exists, there is porn
of it" is cited as being first attested in print in zo r o in a Montreal newspaper,
but they admit "the proverb began appearing on Internet postings in zoog."
This practice of dating a proverb by the first published attestation points ro
a new and growing dilemma: what should be done with less formal Internet

r r8

AMERTCAN SPEECH go.r (2or5)

citations that may not include dates? Other entries anchored in print evidence for earliest attestations also point to

prior-and undated-usage

on

bumper stickers, T:shirts, and the like. The book lists a website where readers can submit additional proverbs and attestations (www.yalebooks.com/
modernproverbs), but the site was not yet functioning when this review was
written.
The compilers explain that they have "included only what folklorists call
'true proverbs"' (xi), screening out such not-quite-proverbs as wellerisms ("I
see said the blind man"), sarcastic questions (e.9., "Is the Pope Catholic?"),
and proverbial comparisons (e.9., "Older than dirt"), a position I applaud,
though I wish they had been firmer in this. Also, they did not include a number of inadequately attested sayings. Even within these limits, they still claim
over l ,4oo new proverbs, though some of these may not be "true proverbs. "
"Dot-com, dot-bomb," for example, highlights the volatility of some parts
of the financial sector; it would be much easier to accept its classification
as a "true proverb" if there were examples of it being used outside of the
financial world and in metaphorical ways. Others less-than-true prciverbs,
of simiarly narrow application, include "Don't eat yellow snow," 'A rolling
loan gathers no loss," "Don't get high on your own supply," and the sexual
"If there's grass on the field, play ball." An example from a narrow field that
has gained broader metaphorical use and has thus moved toward proverb
status is the golf saying "Drive for show, putt for dough," which in broader
usage "refers to the importance of non-glamorous aspects of a process or
enterprise." Though the three compilers are all in the United States, they
were able to compile EnglishJanguage examples from all over the Englishspeaking world by using the Internet. Building on Shapiro's research into
mining the web for quotations, the editors discovered and documented
many of their tlventieth-century proverbs and attestations by electronic
searches of various databases drawing from newspapers, academic journals,
government documents, and the like. They have shown that many sorts of
proverbial nuggets can be mined this way, so that any such proverb studies
in the future will have to include this new best practice.
It is fascinating how many different kinds of sources are listed as first attestations of proverbs: songs, commercials, sports coaches, novels;newspaper
fillers, cartoons, testimony before a government committee, and even a na\y
chaplain's repeated phrase ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition").
As with any reference book, reading the front matter is helpful, and in
this case, vital, as it explains the system by which proverbs are alphabetized.
The same basic system has also been used in other proverb collections, but
it is not always easy to use. But searching for a particular proverb inevitably
leads to the discovery of otherjoys on the way.

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Any proverb dictionary has to list each proverb in a standard form, even
is known and used in various forms. The compilers have dealt
with this problem well, alphabetizing by "key word" as well as the first noun
or first finite verb, and using two different techniques to handle variants
of the same proverb. The first is to alphabetize a proverb by both the first
noun and the key word, noting the cross-reference within each entry. For
example, "Live fast (hard), die young" carries the note, "See 'Live fast, die
young, leave a good-looking coRpsE" (emphases as in original), thus directing attention to the other entry. The other technique for citing variants of
proverb forms is the careful use of parentheses and commas, as in "If frogs
had wings, they wouldn't bump their tails (butts, etc.) on rocks (logs, the
ground, etc.). (If frogs had wings, they could fly.)" Also, since readers may
not always correctly gue ss what key word is used in alphabetizing a proverb,
the compilers also provide directions to the keyword thatwill lead readers to
it, as in "Nice doesn't win games. See 'Nrcn doesn't win games"' (emphases

if the saying

in original).
One small disappointment with this book is the lack of adequate information as to the quantity of the citations. For example, the citations for
"Nothing is as easy as it looks" (with variants) nearly fills half a page with
six citations. This convinces readers that the proverb is well established. In
contrast, "You can't kill shit" is cited from a novel, and the second citation
of it is by the same author. Are these the only known citations? This raises
questions as to how widely this proverb has actually spread and been used.
(A quick Google search finds it now quoted numerous times, though, once
again, we are left with a question of how to evaluate Internet citations.)
as

Some of the proverbs appear in two similar, but contradictory forms, what
Doyle has called "counter proverbs." 'A messy (cluttered) desk is a sign of
a messy mind (person) " was first attested in t 97 4, but 'A messy (cluttered)
desk is a sign of intelligence (brilliance, genius... etc.) " was first attested in
r 973. The related 'A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind" was also was first attested in r973. Similarly, we find "Life is a bowl of cherries" and "Life is not
a bowl of cherries, " both dated from r 93 r . Nobody can be positive which
version actually came first, but it is interesting that such contradictory forms
appeared so close to each other.
Mieder once observed that "Anti-proverbs obviously reveal much about
the mores and worldview of modern people 1...] at least some anti-proverbs
[...] enter the proverbial canon as new and appropriate wisdom" (Mieder
2oo8, r r 6). It is not surprising, then, that many of the new, modern proverbs
listed here are anti-proverbs that play off of established ones. For example,
"Home is where the mortgage is," reflecting a too-familiar aspect of modern
life, is explicitly credited as being an anti-proverb based on "Home is where

AMERTCAN SPEECH go.r (2or5)

L20

Even some proverbs that first appeared in the twentieth century

birth to anti-proverbs, as with 'Act your
age" ( r9z5), followed by'Actyour age, notyour shoe size" ( r967), then 'Act
the heart

is. "

are recorded as having already given

your age, notyour IQ" (tggf).

Of course, like me every reader will think of some proverb he or she
believes the compilers have failed to include. Before such readers claim that
they have found an overlooked nugget, they should consult the appendix
that lists about 2bo "no longer 'modern' proverbs." This appendix surprised
me as it contains sayings that, despite my assumptions of twentieth-century
origins, were older, including, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned
Iies, and statistics," "Love them and leave them," and "Give a man a fish, and
he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." In the
opposite direction, I was startled to find that some proverbs I had assumed
to be much older were first attested in the twentieth century, including "A
rising tide lifts all boats" and "The squeaking wheel gets the grease."
Regarding the link between proverbs and culture, Mieder also observed
"proverbs come and go, that is, antiquated proverbs with messages and images we no longer relate to are dropped from our proverb repertoire, while
new proverbs are created to reflect the mores and values of our time" ( t 993,
r4). I tested this collection of modern proverbs to see if it could be used to
measure the rise of new proverbs "created to reflect the mores and values of
our time" by examining "mores and values" related to casual sex, an aspect
of society that underwent large changes starting around the mid-r96os. I
noted all the proverbs that reflected casual attitudes toward sex, labeling
them by first year of attestation. I classified 48 proverbs as reflecting a casual
attitude toward sex (e.9., "There's no such thing as too much sex"). In the first
6o years of the century, there were only rz. In the rg6os, when the sexual
revolution exploded, there were 1z new ones attested in that single decade.
Many others followed in the succeeding decades. In the case of changing
"mores and values" about sex, then, the Dictionary of Modern Proaerbs clearly
links social change and the emergence of proverbs, just as Mieder predicts.
This sort of detailed research on the dating of proverbs and their reflection
of culture would not be oossible with anv of the usual collections of new
English proverbs.
There are several collections of English proverbs on the market, but this
one, with its unique twentieth-century focus of new proverbs, is unique. It
will be a standard tool for proverb scholars. Also, English departments at any
college or university will want this available for their faculty and students to
study recent changes in English usage.

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REFERENCES

Mieder, Wolfgang. l gg3. Proaerbs Are Neuer Out of Season: PopularWisdom in the Modnn
Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
zoo8. "Prouerbs Speak Loudr than Worels": Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folhlore,
History, Literature and Mass Media.NewYork: Peter Lang.
Tayloq Archer. r969. "How Nearly Complete Are the Collections of Proverbs?" Pro-

anbium r4: g5g-7r.

Whiting, BartlettJere. rg8g. Modnn
Harvard University Press.

Prouerbs and Prounbial Salings.

Cambridge, Mass.:

Proverbs are one of eETE UNSETH's major interests, an interest sparked by the
childhood memory of theJapanese proverb "Even a monkey can fall from a
tree" as he grew up inJapan. His interest grew as he worked for a dozenyears

in Ethiopia, a couiltry with proverbs about proverbs. He teaches a course in

Oral Traditions and Literature at the Graduate Institute ofApplied Linguistics in Dallas. His varied education includes Moody Bible Institute and the
University of Texas at Arlington. E-mail: pete_unseth@gial.edu.
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