- 1諺語；俗諺
A proverb is a short, well-known sentence that offers advice or says something people treat as generally true. “A penny saved is a penny earned” is one. “Look before you leap” is another. Families pass them on; teachers quote them; they feel like common sense wearing old clothes. A proverb is usually a whole sentence, not a two-word idiom. Though actually, English speakers are messy here: they also say saying, or “as the old proverb goes,” about lines that began as quotes, not folk talk. Some proverbs pull in opposite directions (look before you leap, but also he who hesitates is lost), which tells you they are tools for a moment, not laws. The adjective proverbial means “famous from a proverb,” and people stretch that too: “his proverbial lateness” just means the lateness everyone already jokes about.
From the word’s history
From Old French proverbe, from Latin proverbium.
來自古法文 proverbe，源自拉丁文 proverbium「諺語」。
組成From Old French proverbe, from Latin proverbium: pro- (forth) + verbum (word) — a saying put forth.
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
proverbnoun/ˈpɹɒvɜːb/
- 1
A commonly used sentence expressing popular wisdom.
- Near-synonyms: aphorism, maxim, adage, saw, saying, apothegm, byword, paroemia, sententia (Latin)
- As a Yiddish proverb has it: Badarf men hunik ven tsuker iz zis? Who needs honey when sugar is sweet?
- 2
obsoleteAny commonly used turn of phrase expressing a metaphor, simile, or descriptive epithet.
- The definition of a proverb is no simple matter and has occupied scholars from Ancient Greece until the present day. Lord John Russell defined the proverb as ‘the wisdom of many and the wit of one’. The celebrated Spanish writer Cervantes said that a proverb is ‘a short sentence drawn from long experience’. Generally it is accepted that a proverb is a short, pithy traditional saying, which contains some widely accepted knowledge, or which offers advice or presents a moral. This present volume also contains many phrases and sayings which are not strictly proverbs as we use the term today, although we may still think of them as such. This situation arises because, prior to the eighteenth century it was common for the term to include metaphors, similes, and descriptive epithets. […] The essence of a proverb lies in it being a ‘traditional saying’ i.e. something which has commonly passed from one generation to another by word of mouth. […] In his book On the Lessons in Proverbs (1852), Richard Chevenix Trenchard says that there is one quality of the proverb which is the most essential of all: "… popularity, acceptance and adoption on the part of the people. Without this popularity, without these suffrages and this consent of the many, no saying, however seasoned with salt, however worthy on all these accounts to have become a proverb, however fulfilling all other its conditions, can yet be esteemed as such."
- 3
obsoleteA striking or paradoxical assertion; an obscure saying; an enigma; a parable.
- His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.
- 4
obsoleteA familiar illustration; a subject of contemptuous reference.
- Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by word, among all nations.
- 5
obsoleteA drama exemplifying a proverb.
proverbverb/ˈpɹɒvɜːb/
- 1
To write or utter proverbs.
- 2
To name in, or as, a proverb.
- Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool / In every street, do they not say, "How well / Are come upon him his deserts?"
- 3
To provide with a proverb.
- I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。