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119-571: The concept is generally distinct from those of an adage , brocard , chiasmus , epigram , maxim ( legal or philosophical ), principle , proverb , and saying ; although some of these concepts could be construed as types of aphorism. Often aphorisms are distinguished from other short sayings by the need for interpretation to make sense of them. In A Theory of the Aphorism , Andrew Hui defined an aphorism as "a short saying that requires interpretation". A famous example is: You cannot step into

238-461: A typewriter and Letraset could produce a magazine. The publication was initially funded by Osmond and launched in 1961. It is agreed that Osmond suggested the title, and sold many of the early copies in person, in London pubs. The magazine was initially edited by Booker and designed by Rushton, who drew cartoons for it. Usborne was its first managing director. Its subsequent editor, Ingrams, who

357-465: A "proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many." But giving the word "proverb" the sort of definition theorists need has proven to be a difficult task, and although scholars often quote Archer Taylor 's argument that formulating a scientific "definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking... An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence no definition will enable us to identify positively

476-557: A Soft Place", and the pair "Verbs of a feather flock together" and "Verbs of a feather flock together II". Proverbs have been noted as common in subtitles of articles such as "Discontinued intergenerational transmission of Czech in Texas: 'Hindsight is better than foresight'." Also, the reverse is found with a proverb (complete or partial) as the title, then an explanatory subtitle, "To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections". Many authors have cited proverbs as epigrams at

595-412: A US lecturer. The site was listed as a source that is "purposefully fake with the intent of satire/comedy, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society, but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news." The Eye rejected any such classification, saying its site "contains none of these things, as the small selection of stories online are drawn from the journalism pages of

714-617: A boon; / The man who calls the piper / Will also call the tune." Eliza Griswold also created a poem by stringing proverbs together, Libyan proverbs translated into English. Because proverbs are familiar and often pointed, they have been used by a number of hip-hop poets. This has been true not only in the USA, birthplace of hip-hop, but also in Nigeria. Since Nigeria is so multilingual, hip-hop poets there use proverbs from various languages, mixing them in as it fits their need, sometimes translating

833-615: A building praised by his enemy Nikolaus Pevsner ) and carried on by his daughter Candida Lycett Green . For four decades beginning in 1978, it was edited by Gavin Stamp under the pseudonym Piloti . The column notably features a discussion of the state of public architecture and especially the preservation (or otherwise) of Britain's architectural heritage. Street of Shame is a column addressing journalistic misconduct and excesses, hypocrisy, and undue influence by proprietors and editors, mostly sourced from tipoffs —it sometimes serves as

952-447: A cartoon headstone inscribed with an extensive list of well-known names, and the epitaph : "They did not sue in vain". In the 1971 case of Arkell v Pressdram , Arkell's lawyers wrote a letter which concluded: "His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply." Private Eye responded: "We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by

1071-424: A character from that period. Some authors have used so many proverbs that there have been entire books written cataloging their proverb usage, such as Charles Dickens , Agatha Christie , George Bernard Shaw , Miguel de Cervantes , and Friedrich Nietzsche . On the non-fiction side, proverbs have also been used by authors for articles that have no connection to the study of proverbs. Some have been used as

1190-531: A dozen proverbs in The Horse and His Boy , and Mercedes Lackey created dozens for her invented Shin'a'in and Tale'edras cultures; Lackey's proverbs are notable in that they are reminiscent to those of Ancient Asia – e.g. "Just because you feel certain an enemy is lurking behind every bush, it doesn't follow that you are wrong" is like to "Before telling secrets on the road, look in the bushes." These authors are notable for not only using proverbs as integral to

1309-417: A fictional story set in a real society, the movie Forrest Gump introduced "Life is like a box of chocolates" into broad society. In at least one case, it appears that a proverb deliberately created by one writer has been naively picked up and used by another who assumed it to be an established Chinese proverb, Ford Madox Ford having picked up a proverb from Ernest Bramah , "It would be hypocrisy to seek for

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1428-453: A fraction of a proverb to invoke an entire proverb, e.g. "All is fair" instead of "All is fair in love and war", and "A rolling stone" for "A rolling stone gathers no moss." The grammar of proverbs is not always the typical grammar of the spoken language. Elements are often moved around, to achieve rhyme or focus. Another type of grammatical construction is the wellerism , a speaker and a quotation, often with an unusual circumstance, such as

1547-462: A good long-term solution to the problems of the region." The magazine was both criticized and praised for its stance, with some accusing the magazine of antisemitism , while others called it brave for criticizing the Israeli government. Critics such as investigative journalist David Collier condemned the magazine, while supporters defended its critique as not antisemitic but a legitimate questioning of

1666-445: A literal sense, not yet knowing how to understand the conventionalized metaphor. Interpretation of proverbs is also affected by injuries and diseases of the brain, "A hallmark of schizophrenia is impaired proverb interpretation." Proverbs in various languages are found with a wide variety of grammatical structures. In English, for example, we find the following structures (in addition to others): However, people will often quote only

1785-683: A more confrontational way. As well as many one-off cartoons, Private Eye features several regular comic strips: Some of the magazine's former cartoon strips include: At various times, Private Eye has also used the work of Ralph Steadman , Wally Fawkes , Timothy Birdsall , Martin Honeysett , Willie Rushton , Gerald Scarfe , Robert Thompson, Ken Pyne , Geoff Thompson, "Jorodo", Ed McLachlan , Simon Pearsall, Kevin Woodcock , Brian Bagnall, Kathryn Lamb and George Adamson . Private Eye has, from time to time, produced various spin-offs from

1904-406: A partial victory and eventually settled with the magazine. The case threatened to bankrupt Private Eye , which turned to its readers for financial support in the form of a "Goldenballs Fund". Goldsmith was referred to as "Jaws". Goldsmith's solicitor Peter Carter-Ruck was involved in many litigation cases against Private Eye; the magazine refers to his firm as "Carter-Fuck". Robert Maxwell won

2023-411: A person mishears one of Jesus Christ's beatitudes , "I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'" Some books and stories are built around a proverb. Some of Tolkien's books have been analyzed as having "governing proverbs" where "the action of a book turns on or fulfills a proverbial saying." Some stories have been written with a proverb overtly as an opening, such as "A stitch in time saves nine" at

2142-565: A person that keeps moving, seeing moss as a positive thing, such as profit; others see the proverb as praising people that keep moving and developing, seeing moss as a negative thing, such as negative habits. Similarly, among Tajik speakers, the proverb "One hand cannot clap" has two significantly different interpretations. Most see the proverb as promoting teamwork. Others understand it to mean that an argument requires two people. In an extreme example, one researcher working in Ghana found that for

2261-676: A prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India , the Biblical Ecclesiastes , Islamic hadiths , the golden verses of Pythagoras , Hesiod 's Works and Days , the Delphic maxims , and Epictetus' Handbook . Aphoristic collections also make up an important part of the work of some modern authors. A 1559 oil–on–oak-panel painting, Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World ) by Pieter Bruegel

2380-488: A sentence as proverbial," many students of proverbs have attempted to itemize their essential characteristics. More constructively, Wolfgang Mieder has proposed the following definition, "A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation". To distinguish proverbs from idioms, cliches, etc., Norrick created

2499-491: A significant sum from the magazine when he sued over their suggestion that he looked like a criminal. Hislop claimed that his summary of the case: "I've just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech" was the only example of a joke being told on News at Ten . Sonia Sutcliffe , wife of the "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe , sued over allegations in January 1981 that she had used her connection to her husband to make money. Outside

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2618-550: A single Akan proverb, twelve different interpretations were given. Proverb interpretation is not automatic, even for people within a culture: Owomoyela tells of a Yoruba radio program that asked people to interpret an unfamiliar Yoruba proverb, "very few people could do so". Siran found that people who had moved out of the traditional Vute-speaking area of Cameroon were not able to interpret Vute proverbs correctly, even though they still spoke Vute. Their interpretations tended to be literal. Children will sometimes interpret proverbs in

2737-478: A slightly different use of reshaping proverbs, in the Aubrey–Maturin series of historical naval novels by Patrick O'Brian , Capt. Jack Aubrey humorously mangles and mis-splices proverbs, such as "Never count the bear's skin before it is hatched" and "There's a good deal to be said for making hay while the iron is hot." Earlier than O'Brian's Aubrey, Beatrice Grimshaw also used repeated splicings of proverbs in

2856-492: A society, but are now no longer so widely known. For example, English speakers use some non-English proverbs that are drawn from languages that used to be widely understood by the educated class, e.g. "C'est la vie" from French and " Carpe diem " from Latin. Proverbs are often handed down through generations. Therefore, "many proverbs refer to old measurements, obscure professions, outdated weapons, unknown plants, animals, names, and various other traditional matters." Therefore, it

2975-521: A special "subscription cancellation coupon" for disgruntled readers to send in) and the Soham murders of 2002 all attracted similar complaints. Following the 7/7 London bombings the magazine's cover (issue number 1137) featured Prime Minister Tony Blair saying to London mayor Ken Livingstone : "We must track down the evil mastermind behind the bombers...", to which Livingstone replies: "...and invite him around for tea", about his controversial invitation of

3094-591: A systematic philosophy, because the systematic philosophy consists of the attempt to interpret and explain the aphorisms, as he argues is the case with Confucianism. Alternately, aphorisms may be written against systematic philosophy, as a form of challenge or irreverence, as seen in Nietzsche's work. Lastly, aphorisms may come after or following systematic philosophy, as was the case with Francis Bacon, who sought to bring an end to old ways of thinking. Adage A proverb (from Latin : proverbium ) or an adage

3213-401: A table of distinctive features , an abstract tool originally developed for linguistics. Prahlad distinguishes proverbs from some other, closely related types of sayings, "True proverbs must further be distinguished from other types of proverbial speech, e.g. proverbial phrases, Wellerisms , maxims, quotations, and proverbial comparisons." Based on Persian proverbs, Zolfaghari and Ameri propose

3332-550: A title alludes to a proverb, but does not actually quote much of it, such as The Gift Horse's Mouth by Robert Campbell. Some books or stories have titles that are twisted proverbs, anti-proverbs, such as No use dying over spilled milk , When life gives you lululemons, and two books titled Blessed are the Cheesemakers . The twisted proverb of last title was also used in the Monty Python movie Life of Brian , where

3451-664: A venue for the settling of scores within the trade, and is a source of friction with editors. This work formed the basis of much of Ian Hislop's testimony to the Leveson Inquiry , and Leveson was complimentary about the magazine and the column. The term street of shame is a reference to Fleet Street, the former centre of British journalism, and has become synonymous with it. The Rotten Boroughs column focuses on actual or alleged wrongdoing in local or regional governments and elections, for example, corruption, nepotism, hypocrisy and incompetence. The column's name derives from

3570-432: Is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and are an example of formulaic language . A proverbial phrase or a proverbial expression is a type of a conventional saying similar to proverbs and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit

3689-567: Is a skill that is developed over years. Additionally, children have not mastered the patterns of metaphorical expression that are invoked in proverb use. Proverbs, because they are indirect, allow a speaker to disagree or give advice in a way that may be less offensive. Studying actual proverb use in conversation, however, is difficult since the researcher must wait for proverbs to happen. An Ethiopian researcher, Tadesse Jaleta Jirata, made headway in such research by attending and taking notes at events where he knew proverbs were expected to be part of

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3808-499: Is also known for its in-depth investigative journalism into under-reported scandals and cover-ups. Private Eye is Britain's best-selling current affairs news magazine , and such is its long-term popularity and impact that many of its recurring in-jokes have entered popular culture in the United Kingdom. The magazine bucks the trend of declining circulation for print media, having recorded its highest-ever circulation in

3927-455: Is best". "The proverb has since been used in other contexts to prompt quick action." Over 1,400 new English proverbs are said to have been coined and gained currency in the 20th century. This process of creating proverbs is always ongoing, so that possible new proverbs are being created constantly. Those sayings that are adopted and used by an adequate number of people become proverbs in that society. The creation of proverbs in many parts of

4046-499: Is common that they preserve words that become less common and archaic in broader society. Archaic proverbs in solid form – such as murals, carvings, and glass – can be viewed even after the language of their form is no longer widely understood, such as an Anglo-French proverb in a stained glass window in York. Proverbs are often and easily translated and transferred from one language into another. "There

4165-526: Is dangerous in that it is likely to be read by people who are concerned about the safety of the vaccine. A doubting parent who reads this might be convinced there is a genuine problem, and the absence of any proper references will prevent them from checking the many misleading statements." In a review article published in 2010, after Wakefield was disciplined by the General Medical Council , regular columnist Phil Hammond , who contributes to

4284-708: Is embraced as a true local proverb in many places and should not be excluded in any collection of proverbs because it is shared by the neighbors. However, though it has gone through multiple languages and millennia, the proverb can be traced back to an ancient Babylonian proverb Another example of a widely spread proverb is "A drowning person clutches at [frogs] foam", found in Peshai of Afghanistan and Orma of Kenya, and presumably places in between. Proverbs about one hand clapping are common across Asia, from Dari in Afghanistan to Japan. Some studies have been done devoted to

4403-517: Is generally understood to be a concise and eloquent statement of truth . Aphorisms are distinct from axioms : aphorisms generally originate from experience and custom , whereas axioms are self-evident truths and therefore require no additional proof. Aphorisms have been especially used in subjects to which no methodical or scientific treatment was originally applied, such as agriculture , medicine , jurisprudence , and politics . Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature , have

4522-534: Is newly coined by a reference to something recent, such as the Haitian proverb "The fish that is being microwaved doesn't fear the lightning". Similarly, there is a recent Maltese proverb, wil-muturi, ferh u duluri "Women and motorcycles are joys and griefs"; the proverb is clearly new, but still formed as a traditional style couplet with rhyme. Also, there is a proverb in the Kafa language of Ethiopia that refers to

4641-652: Is not commonly used, but a form of it is still heard (or read) in the proverb "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." The conservative form preserves the meter and the rhyme. This conservative nature of proverbs can result in archaic words and grammatical structures being preserved in individual proverbs, as has been widely documented, e.g. in Amharic, Nsenga , Polish, Venda , Hebrew , Giriama , Georgian , Karachay-Balkar , Hausa , Uzbek , Budu of Congo , Kazakh . In addition, proverbs may still be used in languages which were once more widely known in

4760-452: Is nothing so uncertain as the derivation of proverbs, the same proverb being often found in all nations, and it is impossible to assign its paternity." Proverbs are often borrowed across lines of language, religion, and even time. For example, a proverb of the approximate form "No flies enter a mouth that is shut" is currently found in Spain, France, Ethiopia, and many countries in between. It

4879-552: Is one of the most sued people in Britain. From 1969 to the mid-1980s, the magazine was represented by human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman . The writer Colin Watson was the first person to successfully sue Private Eye , objecting to being described as "the little-known author who ... was writing a novel, very Wodehouse but without jokes". He was awarded £750. The cover of the tenth-anniversary issue in 1971 (number 257) showed

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4998-554: Is still found in languages around the world, with plenty of examples from Africa, including Yorùbá and Igbo of Nigeria. A film that makes rich use of proverbs is Forrest Gump , known for both using and creating proverbs. Other studies of the use of proverbs in film include work by Kevin McKenna on the Russian film Aleksandr Nevsky , Haase's study of an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood , Elias Dominguez Barajas on

5117-434: Is the extension of its literal meaning. Some experts classify proverbs and proverbial phrases as types of idioms. Proverbs come from a variety of sources. Some are, indeed, the result of people pondering and crafting language, such as some by Confucius , Plato , Baltasar Gracián , etc. Others are taken from such diverse sources as poetry, stories, songs, commercials, advertisements, movies, literature, etc. A number of

5236-577: The Dear Bill column, mocking Thatcher as an amiable, golf-playing drunk. The column was collected in a series of books and became a stage play ("Anyone for Denis?") in which Wells played the fictional Denis, a character now inextricably "blurred with the real historical figure", according to Ingrams. In The Back is an investigative journalism section notably associated with journalist Paul Foot (the Eye has always published its investigative journalism at

5355-579: The Water Margin ( Shuihu zhuan ) and one proverb every 4,000 words in Wen Jou-hsiang . But modern Chinese novels have fewer proverbs by far. Proverbs (or portions of them) have been the inspiration for titles of books: The Bigger they Come by Erle Stanley Gardner , and Birds of a Feather (several books with this title), Devil in the Details (multiple books with this title). Sometimes

5474-545: The Beeching cuts ) who writes the "Signal Failures" column about the railways. Stories sometimes originate from writers for more mainstream publications who cannot get their stories published by their main employers. Private Eye has traditionally lagged other magazines in adopting new typesetting and printing technologies. At the start, it was laid out with scissors and paste and typed on three IBM Electric typewriters— italics , pica and elite —lending an amateurish look to

5593-599: The Rotten Borough column "at least 13 times" described him as corrupt and claimed he used "the race card " to avoid criticism. A victory for the magazine came in late 2001 when a libel case brought by Cornish chartered accountant John Stuart Condliffe was dropped after six weeks with an out-of-court settlement in which Condliffe paid £100,000 towards the Eye 's defence. Writing in The Guardian , Jessica Hodgson noted, "The victory against Condliffe—who

5712-523: The Seven Sages of Greece , Chanakya , Confucius , or King Solomon . Misquoted or misadvised aphorisms are frequently used as a source of humour ; for instance, wordplays of aphorisms appear in the works of P. G. Wodehouse , Terry Pratchett , and Douglas Adams . Aphorisms being misquoted by sports players, coaches, and commentators form the basis of Private Eye 's Colemanballs section. Professor of Humanities Andrew Hui, author of A Theory of

5831-597: The Vedas were composed of many aphorisms. Likewise, in early Chinese philosophy, Taoist texts like the Tao Te Ching and the Confucian Analects relied on an aphoristic style. Francis Bacon , Blaise Pascal , Desiderius Erasmus , and Friedrich Nietzsche rank among some of the most notable philosophers who employed them in the modern time. Andrew Hui argued that aphorisms played an important role in

5950-459: The "Dirty Digger". Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III are known as "Brenda" and "Brian" respectively, names that originated with palace servants. The first half of each issue, which consists chiefly of news reporting and investigative journalism , tends to include these in-jokes more subtly, to maintain journalistic integrity, while the second half, generally characterised by unrestrained parody and cutting humour, tends to present itself in

6069-620: The "Medicine Balls" column under the pseudonym "MD", stated that: " Private Eye got it wrong in its coverage of MMR" in maintaining its support for Wakefield's position long after shortcomings in his work had emerged. Senior figures in the trade union movement have accused the publication of having a classist anti-union bias, with Unite chief of staff Andrew Murray describing Private Eye as "a publication of assiduous public school boys" and adding that it has "never once written anything about trade unions that isn't informed by cynicism and hostility". The Socialist Worker also wrote that "For

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6188-807: The "Rotten Boroughs" column (named after the rotten boroughs of the pre- Reform Act of 1832 House of Commons). Extensive investigative journalism is published under the "In the Back" section, often tackling cover-ups and unreported scandals. A financial column called "In the City" (referring to the City of London ), written by Michael Gillard under the pseudonym "Slicker", has exposed several significant financial scandals and described unethical business practices. Some contributors to Private Eye are media figures or specialists in their field who write anonymously, often under humorous pseudonyms, such as "Dr B Ching" (a reference to

6307-414: The 18th-century rotten boroughs . There are also several recurring miniature sections . The magazine has occasionally published special editions dedicated to the reporting of particular events, such as government inadequacy over the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak , the conviction in 2001 of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing (an incident regularly covered since by "In the Back"), and

6426-494: The Aphorism offered the following definition of an aphorism: "a short saying that requires interpretation". Hui showed that some of the earliest philosophical texts from traditions around the world used an aphoristic style. Some of the earliest texts in the western philosophical canon feature short statements requiring interpretation, as seen in the Pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Parmenides . In early Hindu literature,

6545-629: The Bini of Nigeria, there are three words that are used to translate "proverb": ere, ivbe , and itan . The first relates to historical events, the second relates to current events, and the third was "linguistic ornamentation in formal discourse". Among the Balochi of Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is a word batal for ordinary proverbs and bassīttuks for "proverbs with background stories". There are also language communities that combine proverbs and riddles in some sayings, leading some scholars to create

6664-729: The Elder , artfully depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish aphorisms ( proverbs ) of the day. The first noted published collection of aphorisms is Adagia by Erasmus . Other important early aphorists were Baltasar Gracián , François de La Rochefoucauld , and Blaise Pascal . Two influential collections of aphorisms published in the twentieth century were Unkempt Thoughts by Stanisław Jerzy Lec (in Polish) and Itch of Wisdom by Mikhail Turovsky (in Russian and English). Many societies have traditional sages or culture heroes to whom aphorisms are commonly attributed, such as

6783-693: The Islamic theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London. During the early 2000s Private Eye published many stories on the MMR vaccine controversy , supporting the interpretation by Andrew Wakefield of published research in The Lancet by the Royal Free Hospital 's Inflammatory Bowel Disease Study Group, which described an apparent link between the vaccine and autism and bowel problems. Many of these stories accused medical researchers who supported

6902-709: The Pacific have them, such as Māori with whakataukī. Other Pacific languages do not, e.g. "there are no proverbs in Kilivila " of the Trobriand Islands . In the New World, there are almost no proverbs: "While proverbs abound in the thousands in most cultures of the world, it remains a riddle why the Native Americans have hardly any proverb tradition at all." Although, "as Mieder has commented . . .

7021-640: The back of the magazine). Private Eye was one of the journalistic organisations involved in sifting and analysing the Paradise Papers , and this commentary appears in In the Back . Nooks and Corners (originally Nooks and Corners of the New Barbarism ), an architectural column severely critical of architectural vandalism and "barbarism", notably modernism and brutalism , was originally founded by John Betjeman in 1971 (his first article attacked

7140-532: The basis for book titles, e.g. I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self by April Lane Benson. Some proverbs been used as the basis for article titles, though often in altered form: "All our eggs in a broken basket: How the Human Terrain System is undermining sustainable military cultural competence" and "Should Rolling Stones Worry About Gathering Moss?", "Between a Rock and

7259-714: The beginning of "Kitty's Class Day", one of Louisa May Alcott 's Proverb Stories . Other times, a proverb appears at the end of a story, summing up a moral to the story, frequently found in Aesop's Fables , such as " Heaven helps those who help themselves " from Hercules and the Wagoner . In a novel by the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma , "proverbs are used to conclude each chapter". Proverbs have also been used strategically by poets. Sometimes proverbs (or portions of them or anti-proverbs ) are used for titles, such as "A bird in

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7378-569: The beginning of their articles, e.g. "'If you want to dismantle a hedge, remove one thorn at a time' Somali proverb" in an article on peacemaking in Somalia. An article about research among the Māori used a Māori proverb as a title, then began the article with the Māori form of the proverb as an epigram "Set the overgrown bush alight and the new flax shoots will spring up", followed by three paragraphs about how

7497-584: The borrowing may have been through plural languages. In some cases, it is possible to make a strong case for discerning the direction of the borrowing based on an artistic form of the proverb in one language, but a prosaic form in another language. For example, in Ethiopia there is a proverb "Of mothers and water, there is none evil." It is found in Amharic , Alaaba language , and Oromo , three languages of Ethiopia: The Oromo version uses poetic features, such as

7616-628: The bush" by Lord Kennet and his stepson Peter Scott and " The blind leading the blind " by Lisa Mueller. Sometimes, multiple proverbs are important parts of poems, such as Paul Muldoon 's "Symposium", which begins "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it hold its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds. Every dog has a stitch in time..." In Finnish there are proverb poems written hundreds of years ago. The Turkish poet Refiki wrote an entire poem by stringing proverbs together, which has been translated into English poetically yielding such verses as "Be watchful and be wary, / But seldom grant

7735-425: The cat. Some authors have created proverbs in their writings, such as J.R.R. Tolkien , and some of these proverbs have made their way into broader society. Similarly, C. S. Lewis is credited for a proverb regarding a lobster in a pot, which he wrote about in his book series Chronicles of Narnia . In cases like this, deliberately created proverbs for fictional societies have become proverbs in real societies. In

7854-489: The columns of the Daily Mail . It is the anti-establishment journal of the establishment." The 2004 Christmas issue received many complaints after it featured Pieter Bruegel 's painting of a nativity scene , in which one wise man said to another: "Apparently, it's David Blunkett 's" (who at the time was involved in a scandal in which he was thought to have impregnated a married woman). Many readers sent letters accusing

7973-524: The conversations. Many authors have used proverbs in their writings, for a very wide variety of literary genres: epics, novels, poems, short stories. Probably the most famous user of proverbs in novels is J. R. R. Tolkien in his The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series. Herman Melville is noted for creating proverbs in Moby-Dick and in his poetry. Also, C. S. Lewis created

8092-626: The court in May 1989, Hislop quipped about the then-record award of £600,000 in damages: "If that's justice then I'm a banana." The sum was reduced on appeal to £60,000. Readers raised a considerable sum in the "Bananaballs Fund", and Private Eye donated the surplus to the families of Peter Sutcliffe's victims. In Sonia Sutcliffe's 1990 libel case against the News of the World , it emerged that she had indeed benefited financially from her husband's crimes, although

8211-524: The details of Private Eye ' s article had been inaccurate. In 1994, retired police inspector Gordon Anglesea successfully sued the Eye and three other media outlets for libel over allegations that he had indecently assaulted under-aged boys in Wrexham in the 1980s. In October 2016, he was convicted of historic sex offences. Hislop said the magazine would not attempt to recover the £80,000 damages awarded to Anglesea, stating: "I can't help thinking of

8330-549: The development of the characters and the story line, but also for creating proverbs. Among medieval literary texts, Geoffrey Chaucer 's Troilus and Criseyde plays a special role because Chaucer's usage seems to challenge the truth value of proverbs by exposing their epistemological unreliability. Rabelais used proverbs to write an entire chapter of Gargantua . The patterns of using proverbs in literature can change over time. A study of "classical Chinese novels" found proverb use as frequently as one proverb every 3,500 words in

8449-403: The film Viva Zapata! , and Aboneh Ashagrie on The Athlete (a movie in Amharic about Abebe Bikila ). Television programs have also been named with reference to proverbs, usually shortened, such Birds of a Feather and Diff'rent Strokes . In the case of Forrest Gump , the screenplay by Eric Roth had more proverbs than the novel by Winston Groom , but for The Harder They Come ,

8568-712: The following definition: "A proverb is a short sentence, which is well-known and at times rhythmic, including advice, sage themes and ethnic experiences, comprising simile, metaphor or irony which is well-known among people for its fluent wording, clarity of expression, simplicity, expansiveness and generality and is used either with or without change." There are many sayings in English that are commonly referred to as "proverbs", such as weather sayings. Alan Dundes , however, rejects including such sayings among truly proverbs: "Are weather proverbs proverbs? I would say emphatically 'No!'" The definition of "proverb" has also changed over

8687-403: The following issue's cover —a cartoon depicting Santa 's sleigh shredded by a wind farm : one said: "To use a picture of Our Lord Father Christmas and his Holy Reindeer being torn limb from limb while flying over a windfarm is inappropriate and blasphemous." In November 2016, Private Eye 's official website appeared on a list of over 150 "fake news" websites compiled by Melissa Zimdars,

8806-522: The following, a representative of a wellerism proverb found in many languages: "The bride couldn't dance; she said, 'The room floor isn't flat.'" Another type of grammatical structure in proverbs is a short dialogue: Because many proverbs are both poetic and traditional, they are often passed down in fixed forms. Though spoken language may change, many proverbs are often preserved in conservative, even archaic , form. "Proverbs often contain archaic... words and structures." In English, for example, "betwixt"

8925-482: The forced military conscription of the 1980s, "...the one who hid himself lived to have children." A Mongolian proverb also shows evidence of recent origin, "A beggar who sits on gold; Foam rubber piled on edge." Another example of a proverb that is clearly recent is this from Sesotho : "A mistake goes with the printer." A political candidate in Kenya popularised a new proverb in his 1995 campaign, Chuth ber "Immediacy

9044-611: The grammar of the context. Collectively, they form a genre of folklore . Some proverbs exist in more than one language because people borrow them from languages and cultures with which they are in contact. In the West, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs ) and medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus ) have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs. Not all Biblical proverbs, however, were distributed to

9163-486: The history of philosophy, influencing the favored mediums of philosophical traditions. He argued for example, that the Platonic Dialogues served as a response to the difficult to interpret fragments and phrases which Pre-Socratic philosophers were famous for. Hui proposes that aphorisms often arrive before, after, or in response to more systematic argumentative philosophy. For example, aphorisms may come before

9282-464: The initial ha in both clauses with the final -aa in the same word, and both clauses ending with -an . Also, both clauses are built with the vowel a in the first and last words, but the vowel i in the one syllable central word. In contrast, the Amharic and Alaaba versions of the proverb show little evidence of sound-based art. However, not all languages have proverbs. Proverbs are (nearly) universal across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some languages in

9401-404: The label "proverb riddles". Another similar construction is an idiomatic phrase. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a distinction between idiomatic phrase and proverbial expression. In both of them the meaning does not immediately follow from the phrase. The difference is that an idiomatic phrase involves figurative language in its components, while in a proverbial phrase the figurative meaning

9520-536: The lyrics for Beauty and the Beast , Gaston plays with three proverbs in sequence, "All roads lead to.../The best things in life are.../All's well that ends with...me." Private Eye Private Eye is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised for its prominent criticism and lampooning of public figures. It

9639-565: The magazine as "(Sir) Jammy Fishpaste" and "Jonah Jammy fingers") and several by Robert Maxwell (known as "Captain Bob"), one of which resulted in the award of costs and reported damages of £225,000, and attacks on the magazine by Maxwell through a book, Malice in Wonderland , and a one-off magazine, Not Private Eye . Its defenders point out that it often carries news that the mainstream press will not print for fear of legal reprisals or because

9758-558: The magazine before he fell out with Ian Hislop and other writers, while Foot wrote on politics, local government and corruption. The receptionist and general factotum from 1984 to 2014 was Hilary Lowinger . Ingrams continued as editor until 1986 when he was succeeded by Hislop. Ingrams remains chairman of the holding company. Private Eye often reports on the misdeeds of powerful and important individuals and, consequently, has received numerous libel writs throughout its history. These include three issued by James Goldsmith (known in

9877-414: The magazine for many years. They include euphemisms designed to avoid the notoriously plaintiff-friendly English libel laws, such as replacing the word "drunk" with " tired and emotional ", or using the phrase "Ugandan discussions" to denote illicit sexual exploits; and more obvious parodies using easily recognisable stereotypes, such as the lampooning of Conservative MPs as " Sir Bufton Tufton ". Some of

9996-467: The magazine of blasphemy and anti-Christian attitudes. One stated that the "witless, gutless buggers wouldn't dare mock Islam ". It has, however, regularly published Islam-related humour such as the cartoon which portrayed a "Taliban careers master asking a pupil: What would you like to be when you blow up?". Many letters in the first issue of 2005 disagreed with the former readers' complaints, and some were parodies of those letters, "complaining" about

10115-658: The magazine", adding that "even US college students might recognise that the Headmistress's letter is not really from a troubled high school". Zimdars later removed the website from her list, after the Eye had contacted her for clarification. In 2023, Private Eye published a satirical cover on the Israel–Hamas war , reading "This magazine may contain some criticism of the Israeli government and may suggest that killing everyone in Gaza as revenge for Hamas atrocities may not be

10234-414: The magazine, including: Some have found the magazine's irreverence and sometimes controversial humour offensive. Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Private Eye printed a cover headed "Media to blame". Under this headline was a picture of many hundreds of people outside Buckingham Palace , with one person commenting that the papers were "a disgrace", another agreeing, saying that it

10353-481: The magazine. In 1976 James Goldsmith brought criminal libel charges against the magazine, meaning that if found guilty, editor Richard Ingrams and the author of the article, Patrick Marnham , could be imprisoned. He sued over allegations that he had conspired with the Clermont Set to assist Lord Lucan to evade the police, who wanted him in connection with the murder of his children's nanny. Goldsmith won

10472-403: The material is of minority interest. As well as covering a wide range of current affairs, Private Eye is also known for highlighting the errors and hypocritical behaviour of newspapers in the "Street of Shame" column, named after Fleet Street , the former home of many papers. It reports on parliamentary and national political issues, with regional and local politics covered in equal depth under

10591-488: The mouth of an eccentric marquis to create a memorable character in The Sorcerer's Stone , such as "The proof of the pudding sweeps clean" (p. 109) and "A stitch in time is as good as a mile" (p. 97). Because proverbs are so much a part of the language and culture, authors have sometimes used proverbs in historical fiction effectively, but anachronistically, before the proverb was actually known. For example,

10710-470: The nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off." The plaintiff withdrew the threatened lawsuit. The magazine has since used this exchange as a euphemism for a blunt and coarse dismissal, i.e.: "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram ". As with " tired and emotional " this usage has spread beyond

10829-513: The novel Ramage and the Rebels , by Dudley Pope is set in approximately 1800. Captain Ramage reminds his adversary "You are supposed to know that it is dangerous to change horses in midstream" (p. 259), with another allusion to the same proverb three pages later. However, the proverb about changing horses in midstream is reliably dated to 1864, so the proverb could not have been known or used by

10948-451: The one who has two houses loses his mind."), The Green Ray , Boyfriends and Girlfriends . Movie titles based on proverbs include Murder Will Out (1939 film) , Try, Try Again , and The Harder They Fall . A twisted anti-proverb was the title for a Three Stooges film, A Bird in the Head . The title of an award-winning Turkish film, Three Monkeys , also invokes a proverb, though

11067-506: The original. For example, "They forget say ogbon ju agbaralo They forget that wisdom is greater than power" Some authors have bent and twisted proverbs, creating anti-proverbs, for a variety of literary effects. For example, in the Harry Potter novels, J. K. Rowling reshapes a standard English proverb into "It's no good crying over spilt potion" and Dumbledore advises Harry not to "count your owls before they are delivered". In

11186-406: The pages. For some years after layout tools became available the magazine retained this technique to maintain its look, although the three older typewriters were replaced with an IBM composer. Today the magazine is still predominantly in black and white (though the cover and some cartoons inside appear in colour) and there is more text and less white space than is typical for a modern magazine. Much of

11305-432: The past 50 years, the satirical magazine Private Eye has upset and enraged the powerful. Its mix of humour and investigation has tirelessly challenged the hypocrisy of the elite. ... But it also has serious weaknesses. Among the witty—if sometimes tired—spoof articles and cartoons, there is a nasty streak of snobbery and prejudice. Its jokes about the poor, women and young people rely on lazy stereotypes you might expect from

11424-464: The person of the Sacred Emperor in a Low Tea House." The proverb with "a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world", going back to "around 1800 BC" is in a Sumerian clay tablet, "The bitch by her acting too hastily brought forth the blind". Though many proverbs are ancient, they were all newly created at some point by somebody. Sometimes it is easy to detect that a proverb

11543-661: The proportionality of Israel's response. Ian Hislop is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most sued man in English legal history. Private Eye has long been known for attracting libel lawsuits which, in English law , can easily lead to the award of damages. The publication "sets aside almost a quarter of its turnover for paying out in libel defeats" although the magazine frequently finds other ways to defuse legal tensions, such as by printing letters from aggrieved parties. As editor since 1986, Ian Hislop

11662-566: The proverb served as a metaphor for the research and the present context. A British proverb has even been used as the title for a doctoral dissertation: Where there is muck there is brass . Proverbs have also been used as a framework for an article. Similarly to other forms of literature, proverbs have also been used as important units of language in drama and films. This is true from the days of classical Greek works to old French to Shakespeare, to 19th Century Spanish, 19th century Russian, to today. The use of proverbs in drama and film today

11781-610: The purported MMR vaccine controversy (since shown to be medical fraud committed by Andrew Wakefield ) in 2002. A special issue was published in 2004 to mark the death of long-time contributor Paul Foot . In 2005, The Guardian and Private Eye established the Paul Foot Award (referred to colloquially as the "Footy"), with an annual £10,000 prize fund, for investigative/campaigning journalism in memory of Foot. The magazine has many recurring in-jokes and convoluted references, often comprehensible only to those who have read

11900-438: The reason for the visible lack of proverbs was probably the inability of foreign researchers to identify proverbial utterances among those peoples." Hakamies has examined the matter of whether proverbs are found universally, a universal genre, concluding that they are not. Proverbs are used in conversation by adults more than children, partially because adults have learned more proverbs than children. Also, using proverbs well

12019-612: The reverse is true, where the novel derived from the movie by Michael Thelwell has many more proverbs than the movie. Éric Rohmer , the French film director, directed a series of films, the "Comedies and Proverbs", where each film was based on a proverb: The Aviator's Wife , The Perfect Marriage , Pauline at the Beach , Full Moon in Paris (the film's proverb was invented by Rohmer himself: "The one who has two wives loses his soul,

12138-447: The same extent: one scholar has gathered evidence to show that cultures in which the Bible is the major spiritual book contain "between three hundred and five hundred proverbs that stem from the Bible," whereas another shows that, of the 106 most common and widespread proverbs across Europe, 11 are from the Bible. However, almost every culture has its own unique proverbs. Lord John Russell ( c.  1850 ) observed poetically that

12257-616: The same river twice. The word was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates , a long series of propositions concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing and medicine . The often-cited first sentence of this work is: " Ὁ βίος βραχύς, δὲ τέχνη μακρή " – "life is short, art is long", usually reversed in order ( Ars longa, vita brevis ). This aphorism was later applied or adapted to physical science and then morphed into multifarious aphorisms of philosophy , morality , and literature . Currently, an aphorism

12376-410: The school magazine name The Salopian ) mocked school spirit, traditions and the masters. After National Service , Ingrams and Foot went as undergraduates to Oxford University , where they met future collaborators including Peter Usborne , Andrew Osmond and John Wells . The magazine was properly begun when they learned of a new printing process, photo-litho offset , which meant that anybody with

12495-403: The second half of 2016. It is privately owned and highly profitable. With a "deeply conservative resistance to change", it has resisted moves to online content or glossy format: it has always been printed on cheap paper and resembles, in format and content, a comic rather than a serious magazine. Both its satire and investigative journalism have led to numerous libel suits. It is known for

12614-537: The shelves of some newsagents. These included WHSmith , which had previously refused to stock Private Eye until well into the 1970s and was characterised in the magazine as "WH Smugg" or "WH Smut" on account of its policy of stocking pornographic magazines. The issues that followed the Ladbroke Grove rail crash in 1999 (number 987), the September 11 attacks of 2001 (number 1037; the magazine even included

12733-404: The spread of proverbs in certain regions, such as India and her neighbors and Europe. An extreme example of the borrowing and spread of proverbs was the work done to create a corpus of proverbs for Esperanto , where all the proverbs were translated from other languages. It is often not possible to trace the direction of borrowing a proverb between languages. This is complicated by the fact that

12852-569: The terms have fallen into disuse when their hidden meanings have become better known. The magazine often deliberately misspells the names of certain organisations, such as "Crapita" for the outsourcing company Capita , "Carter-Fuck" for the law firm Carter-Ruck , and " The Grauniad " for The Guardian (the latter a reference to the newspaper's frequent typos in its days as The Manchester Guardian ). Certain individuals may be referred to by another name, for example, Piers Morgan as "Piers Moron", Richard Branson as "Beardie", and Rupert Murdoch as

12971-518: The text is printed in the standard Times New Roman font. The former "Colour Section" was printed in black and white like the rest of the magazine: only the content was colourful. A series of parody columns referring to the Prime Minister of the day has been a long-term feature of Private Eye . While satirical, during the 1980s, Ingrams and John Wells wrote an affectionate series of fictional letters from Denis Thatcher to Bill Deedes in

13090-653: The title does not fully quote it. They have also been used as the titles of plays: Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang , Dog Eat Dog by Mary Gallagher , and The Dog in the Manger by Charles Hale Hoyt . The use of proverbs as titles for plays is not, of course, limited to English plays: Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée (A door must be open or closed) by Paul de Musset . Proverbs have also been used in musical dramas, such as The Full Monty , which has been shown to use proverbs in clever ways. In

13209-404: The use of pseudonyms by its contributors, many of whom have been prominent in public life—this even extends to a fictional proprietor, Lord Gnome. The forerunner of Private Eye was The Walopian , an underground magazine published at Shrewsbury School by pupils in the mid-1950s and edited by Richard Ingrams , Willie Rushton , Christopher Booker and Paul Foot . The Walopian (a play on

13328-461: The vaccine's safety of having conflicts of interest because of funding from the pharmaceutical industry. Initially dismissive of Wakefield, the magazine rapidly moved to support him, in 2002 publishing a 32-page MMR Special Report that supported Wakefield's assertion that MMR vaccines "should be given individually at not less than one-year intervals." The British Medical Journal issued a contemporary press release that concluded: "The Eye report

13447-401: The well known sayings of Jesus, Shakespeare, and others have become proverbs, though they were original at the time of their creation, and many of these sayings were not seen as proverbs when they were first coined. Many proverbs are based on stories, often the end of a story. For example, the proverb " Who will bell the cat ?" is from the end of a story about the mice planning how to be safe from

13566-528: The witnesses who came forward to assist our case at the time, one of whom later committed suicide telling his wife that he never got over not being believed. Private Eye will not be looking to get our money back from the libel damages. Others have paid a far higher price." Anglesea died in December 2016, six weeks into a 12-year prison sentence. In 1999, former Hackney London Borough Council executive Samuel Yeboah won substantial damages and an apology after

13685-583: The world during the Corona-virus era showed how quickly proverbs and anti-proverbs can be created. Interpreting proverbs is often complex, but is best done in a context. Interpreting proverbs from other cultures is much more difficult than interpreting proverbs in one's own culture. Even within English-speaking cultures, there is difference of opinion on how to interpret the proverb " A rolling stone gathers no moss ." Some see it as condemning

13804-596: The years. For example, the following was labeled "A Yorkshire proverb" in 1883, but would not be categorized as a proverb by most today, "as throng as Throp's wife when she hanged herself with a dish-cloth". The changing of the definition of "proverb" is also noted in Turkish . In other languages and cultures, the definition of "proverb" also differs from English. In the Chumburung language of Ghana, " aŋase are literal proverbs and akpare are metaphoric ones". Among

13923-461: Was a long-time contributor. Others essential to the development of the magazine were Auberon Waugh , Claud Cockburn (who had run a pre-war scandal sheet, The Week ), Barry Fantoni , Gerald Scarfe , Tony Rushton, Patrick Marnham and Candida Betjeman . Christopher Logue was another long-time contributor, providing the column "True Stories", featuring cuttings from the national press. The gossip columnist Nigel Dempster wrote extensively for

14042-412: Was impossible to get one anywhere, and another saying, "Borrow mine. It's got a picture of the car." Following the abrupt change in reporting from newspapers immediately following her death, the issue also featured a mock retraction from "all newspapers" of everything negative that they had ever said about Diana. This was enough to cause a flood of complaints and the temporary removal of the magazine from

14161-567: Was then pursuing a career as an actor, shared the editorship with Booker from around issue number 10 and took over from issue 40. At first, Private Eye was a vehicle for juvenile jokes: an extension of the original school magazine, and an alternative to Punch . Peter Cook —who in October 1961 founded The Establishment , the first satirical nightclub in London—purchased Private Eye in 1962, together with Nicholas Luard , and

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