Phraseology and Culture in English

Charles Clay Doyle 
ness to eating disorders, say “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips,” 
and “It’s better to look good than to feel good.” 
The foregoing proverbs I have learned from my students, who are pre-
ponderantly female. Part of my point here is to caution that such proverbs 
do not necessarily belong to “Americans” at large (much less “English speak-
ers”) or even to “women” – but perhaps only to women of a particular age, 
social class, mindset, and geographical area. To illustrate how a proverb 
can be highly localized in its circulation and its reference: At the University 
of Georgia, where I teach, the number of female students is almost double 
the number of males, and the male students frequently gravitate to majors 
in business, agriculture, and the sciences. So unattached women in a liberal 
arts curriculum often lament the scarcity of potential male partners. Seventy 
miles to the west stands Georgia Tech, with its predominantly male student 
body. Women at the University of Georgia have a proverb on the subject: 
At Georgia Tech, the proverb notes, “The odds are good, but the goods are 
odd.” (I wonder if the same proverb – or a similar one – can be heard in 
reference to Cal Tech or Texas A&M or other colleges that traditionally 
have enrolled more frogs than princesses.) 
Men have their own proverbs, generally not spoken to women, often not 
known by women, usually not recorded in proverb dictionaries, many of 
them probably of recent origin. These proverbs seem to be obsessively 
sexual – and more brutally so than current women’s proverbs: We men not 
only “Love ’em and leave ’em” (maybe we sometimes prefer such relation-
ships); we even less delicately (though just as alliteratively) “Fuck ’em and 
forget ’em.” Of course, it is possible that women, in the post-Sex-in-the-
City age, have comparable expressions or similar attitudes, and that my 
female students have protected my own delicate sensibilities from knowing 
their hard-core folk expressions. Present-day men, I believe, most often as-
sume a measure of irony when uttering flagrantly antifeminist proverbs; 
perhaps we have at least learned to be embarrassed about expressing certain 
attitudes. To reiterate the point: proverb scholars must take care to ascertain 
exactly which men use the sayings, under what circumstances, in what 
style, with what implications. A proverb authentically exists only in the 
process of its “performance.” 
Predictably, many male proverbs focus on genital concerns. The saying 
“You can swim in a red river, but you can’t drink from it” helps us remem-
ber when (in the menstrual cycle of a partner) to perform which sex acts. 
The proverb “If she takes care of her feet, she keeps it neat” enables us to 
predict the degree of “neatness” that “it” may ultimately reveal – the ante-

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Collections of proverbs and proverb dictionaries
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cedent of it being a woman’s pubic area; I think the proverb first referred to 
hygiene, but with the evolution of recent fads, it can now refer to the groom-
ing of pubic hair. Now young men as well as young women have started 
shaving their pubic hair. Since adolescent males traditionally take pride in 
having acquired that token of their virility, the practice calls for explana-
tion; one proverbial explanation reveals a fundamental male insecurity: “If 
the hedge is trimmed, the house looks bigger” – for (as we now know) 
“Size does matter” to modern women. 
Certainly men are capable of satirizing the stereotype of themselves as 
sexist pigs. Many proverbs boast of males’ indiscriminate sexual voracity: 
If a woman is homely, then “Cover her face with a flag and fuck for Old 
Glory.” There are no age restrictions on sexual partners; the younger the 
better: “If there’s no grass on the field, call it practice”; “If they’re old 
enough to crawl, they’re in the right position.” It is hard to imagine that 
such expressions would be uttered “seriously” – as practical advice to gen-
der-mates, or as the received wisdom of the ages! I have heard such prov-
erbs spoken only in the manner of quips or jokes – for example, hyperboli-
cally chiding a man seen in the amorous company of a much younger 
woman. Maybe there is even something redemptive in the undiscriminating 
attraction to all women; after all, how different, in its “meaning,” is the 
wholesome proverb “Beauty is only skin deep” from the newer male prov-
erb “It’s all pink on the inside”? At least that is not the sentiment that gives 
rise to anorexia in young women. 
Dictionaries of proverbs are rightly cautious about including expres-
sions that may prove ephemeral. Yet such compilations register numerous 
old proverbs for which only one or two instances could be discovered in 
print. In general, proverb dictionaries are much more inclined to enter ex-
pressions that are archaic or obsolete than those that carry the aura of new-
ness, thus ensuring that the compilation will be biased against “currency” 
on both chronological ends. Admittedly, my focus on “gendered” proverbs, 
so often sexual in imagery or application, may not be a good example of 
sayings that belong specifically to a delimited group within the larger cul-
ture. Collections that are text-based will inevitably record sexual proverbs 
more seldom – and with fewer attestations – than other sorts of expressions, 
however commonly sexual proverbs may have occurred in oral tradition; 
after all, prudery wields a heavy hand in the determining of what is print-
able in any genre. The prudish publishing industry and its employees, in 
turn, ultimately govern what proverbs will be deemed fit to print in proverb 
dictionaries. The Oxford University Press, especially, prizes modesty (“No 

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Charles Clay Doyle 
sex, please; we’re English”!). So the expurgatory tradition in proverb com-
pilations, explicitly adopted by James Kelly in 1721, still survives.