31. Proverbs, familiar quotation and clichés

Consider the following examples of proverbs:

We never know the value of water till the well is dry.

You can take the horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink.

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Proverbs, if viewed in their structural aspect, are sentences, and so cannot be used in the way in which phraseological units are used. If one compares proverbs and phraseological units in the semantic aspect, the difference seems to become even more obvious. Proverbs could be best compared with minute fables for, like the latter, they sum up the collective experience of the community. They moralise (Hell is paved with good intentions), give advice (Don't judge a tree by its bark), give warning (If you sing before breakfast, you will cry before night), admonish (Liars should have good memories), criticise (Everyone calls his own geese swans).

A proverb is a short familiar epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson in a concise and imaginative way. Proverbs have much in common with set expressions, because their lexical components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, and they are introduced into speech ready-made. That is why some scholars following V.V. Vinogradov think proverbs must be studied together with phraseological units. Others like J. Casares and N.N. Amosova think that unless they regularly form parts of other sentences it is erroneous to include them into the system of language, because they are independent units of communication. N.N. Amosova even thinks that there is no more reason to consider them as part of phraseology than, for instance, riddles and children’s counts. Lexicology does not deal more fully with the peculiarities of proverbs: created in folklore, they are studied by folklorists, but in treating units introduced into the act of communication ready-made we cannot avoid touching upon them too.

As to familiar quotations, they are different from proverbs in their origin. They come from literature but by and by they become part and parcel of the language, so that many people using them do not even know that they are quoting, and very few could acccurately name the play or passage on which they are drawing even when they are aware of using a quotation from W. Shakespeare.

The Shakespearian quotations have become and remain extremely numerous — they have contributed enormously to the store of the language. Some of the most often used are: I know a trick worth two of that; A man more sinned against than sinning ("King Lear"); Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ("Henry IV").

Some quotations are so often used that they come to be considered clichés. The term comes from the printing trade. The cliché (the word is French) is a metal block used for printing pictures and turning them out in great numbers. The term is used to denote such phrases as have become hackneyed and stale. Being constantly and mechanically repeated they have lost their original expressiveness and so are better avoided. H.W. Fowler in a burst of eloquence in denouncing them even exclaims: “How many a time has Galileo longed to recant his recantation, as e pur si muove was once more applied or misapplied!"¹ Opinions may vary on what is tolerable and what sounds an offence to most of the listeners or readers, as everyone may have his own likes and dislikes. The following are perhaps the most generally recognised: the acid test, ample opportunities, astronomical figures, the arms of Morpheus, to break the ice, consigned to oblivion, the irony of fate, to sleep the sleep of the just, stand shoulder to shoulder, swan song, toe the line, tender mercies, etc.