A Dictionary of American Proverbs is a treasury of more than 15,000 sayings, adages, and maxims commonly used in popular speech in the United States and Canada. As the first major collection of proverbs in the English language based on oral sources rather than written sources, it includes thousands of uniquely American proverbs that have never before been recorded as well as many thousands of traditional sayings that have found their way into American speech from classical, biblical, British, continental European, and American literature.
This unparalleled collection will delight the...

The wellerism--so called in English because it is a form of expression typical or reminiscent of Sam Weller or his father, two celebrated characters in Dickens's Pickwick Papers--is a major subtype of the proverb. Known since Sumerian times, it has been popular in most European languages and some African languages. As defined by folklorists and proverb scholars, a wellerism consists of three parts: a speech or statement (often a proverb), identification of the speaker, and identification of the situation, which gives the expression an ironic or humorous twist, often in the form of a...