W.C. Hazlitt, comp. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. 1907.
Wilful waste to You cast your net
Wilful waste brings woeful want.
Will any hang a wooden kettle over the fire?
Will buyeth, and money payeth.
Will is the cause of woe.
Will will have will, though will woe win.
Willi nilli.
i.e., Will he, nill he. Nilly-willy is a phrase for a wavering person.
Willows are weak, yet they bind other wood.
Will’s a good boy when Will’s at home.
Willy Bickerton’s blade.
A cant term of somewhat dubious signification. “— if not, and that I proue too weake for him in sophistrie, I meane to borrowe Wili Bickertons blade, of as good a temper as Morglay….” A Notable Discovery of Cosenage, 1591, Preface.
Wiltshire moonrakers.
The expression of ‘Hampshire and Wiltshire moonrakers’ had its origin in the Wiltshire peasants fishing up the contraband goods at night brought through the [New] Forest and hid in the various ponds.”—Wise’s New Forest, 1867, p. 170. Compare the History of Sign-Boards, 1867, p. 463.
Win at first, and lose at last.
Title of a ballad printed about 1660. See my Bibl. Coll., 1882, p. 115.
Win gold and wear gold.
Win whoso may, it is for all to sell.
Chaucer’s Wif of Bathes Prologe.
Wind and weather, do thy worst.
Wine and wenches empty men’s purses.
Wine by the savour, bread by the colour.
Wine-counsels seldom prosper.
Sometimes we find this in rhyme:
Wine hath drowned more men than the sea.
Wine is a turncoat: first a friend, then an enemy.
Wine makes old wives wenches.
Wine neither keeps secrets nor fulfils promises.
Wine that costs nothing is digested ere it be drunk.
Wine washeth off the daub.
Wine, wood, women, and water. Herefordshire.
This county is said to be famous for its four W’s, viz., its wine (cider), its wood (its sylvan scenery), its women, and its water (the river Wye).
Wink at small faults.
One of the earliest originators, if not authors, of a proverb, was Cipius the Roman, who winked at a very great fault, in pretending to be asleep while his wife received her admirer. The saying ascribed to him was, “Non omnibus dormio,” by way, as it were, of self-vindication.
Winter and wedlock tame man and beast.
Winter finds out what summer lays up.
Winter is summer’s heir.
Al invierno lluvioso, verano abundoso. Span.—R.
Winter never rots in the sky.
Winter shall warp water.
Winter thunder makes summer’s wonder.
Willsford’s Nature’s Secrets, 1658, p. 113.
Winter weather and women’s thoughts often change.
Wisdom in a poor man is a diamond set in lead.
Wisdom is a good purchase, though we pay dear for it.
Wisdom liketh not chance.
Lottery of 1567 (Kempe’s Loseley MSS., 1836, p. 210).
Wisdom sometimes walks in clouted shoes.
Wise behind the hand.
The Comicall History of the Marriage twixt Fergusia and Heptarchus (circa 1670), p. 32.
Wise fear begets care.
Wise men change their mind, fools never.
Wise men have their mouth in their heart, fools their heart in their mouth.
Wise men in the world are like timber trees in a hedge, here and there one.
Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own.
Wise words and great seldom agree.
Wishers and woulders be no good householders.
Stanbridge in his Vulgaria, more than once printed by W. de Worde, includes in his examples:—
Wishes can never fill a sack.
Wit and wisdom are good warison, quoth Hendyng.
i.e., possession. P. of H. in Rel. Antiq., i. 109.
Wit bought is better than wit taught.
Chamberlain’s Conceits, Clinches, &c., 1639 (ap. Old Engl. J. B., iii.)
Wit goes not all by the hair.
Sir Thomas More, a play (circa 1590), ed. Dyce, 59.
Wit is folly unless a wise man hath the keeping of it.
Wit is never good till it be bought.
Scogin’s Jests, ed. 1626.
Wit may be bought too dear.
Wit, whither wilt thou?
See Nares’ Glossary, ed. 1859, p. 966.
Wit without wisdom cuts other men’s meat and its own fingers.
With a fool and a knave there’s no conclusion.
With a grain of allowance.
The Latin Cum grano salis is at least equally familiar.
With a little steel a little man’s armed.
With a mischief.
With a wanion.
Towneley Mysteries, 109; Harman’s Caveat, 1567. “Was not this a good prelate? he should haue bene at home preachynge in hys Dioces in a wanion.”—Latimer’s Sermons, 1549, repr. Arber, p. 63.
With a wet finger, i.e., without any trouble.
Bishop Pilkington’s Burning of Paules Church, 1561.
“Porter.If I may trust a woman, sir, she will come.
“Fustigo.There’s for thy pain (gives money): God a mercy, if ever I stand in need of a Wench that will come with a wet finger, porter, thou shalt earn my money before any clarissimo in Milan.”—The Honest Whore, by Decker and Middleton, 1604 (Middleton’s Works, 1840, iii. 10). See also v. 1 (ibid. 97). It also occurs in Day’s Ile of Gvls, 1606, repr. 107, in Dekker’s Strange Horse Race, 1613, sign. D 3, and elsewhere. My American correspondent, however, says:—“I think Heywood errs in rendering this “without any trouble.” “The wet finger of intrigue” is an old phrase, apparently derived from a practice of writing on the table with a wine-wet finger.”
With all your joy join all your jeopardy.
With as good a will as ever I came from school.
With as good will as a bear goeth to the stake.
With bag and baggage.
Decker’s Lanthorne and Candlelight, 1608, sign. I 4.
With butler’s grace.
i.e., with very little grace at all. “The respect which the wantonest and vainest heads haue of them, is as of fiddlers, who are regarded but for a baudy song, at a merry meeting, and when they haue done, are commonly sent away with Butlers grace.”—Melton’s Sixe-Folde Politician, 1609, sign. D.
With cost one may make good pottage of a footstool.
With empty hand men may no hawks lure.
Chaucer’s Wif of Bathes Prologe.
With foxes we must play the fox.
With no fortune but a Midland water-mill.
The New Westminster Wedding, 1693, p. 3. A coarse adage requiring no gloss.
With respect to the gout, / the physician is but a lout.
With time and patience the leaf of the mulberry-tree becomes satin. Walpoliana.
Witham pike: / England hath none like.
Witham seems to have been famed for its eels:—
Withhold not thine hand from shewing to the poor.
Within a hog’s gape. E. Anglia.
Very near or soon.
Within the danger of any one.
Into any one’s hands or power. “I was as ware as I could bee, not to vtter anything for mine owne harme, for feare I should come in their daunger.”—Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique, edit. 1584, sign. A v. So, in the Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 179, speaking of a man who had left his home in debt, John Paston writes to his father, 9th March, 1477: “he departyd with ought lycence of hys mastyr, Sir Thomas Brewse, and is fere endangered to dyvers in thys contrey.” The phrase occurs again in a letter from Henry Windsor to John Paston, assigned to 1458.
Without all [awl] the cobbler’s nobody.
Without book.
At random. So Gascoigne, in the Epistle to the Yong Gentlemen before his Posies, 1575, says: “There are also certaine others who thinke it sufficient if (parrot like) they can rehearse things without booke.” See also the Works, ii. 3.
Without hope the heart would break.
Without pains, no gains.
Or, No gains without pains; or, No sweet without some sweat. “Dii laboribus omnia vendunt. Carne sem osso, proveito sem trabalho. Port. Quien peces quiere, mejarse tiene. Span. No se toman truchas á bragas enxutas.”—R.
Wives must be had, / be they good or bad.
Woe the pie!
A saying found in Damon and Pithias, 1571. Dodsley’s O. P., 1825, i. 193.
Woe to the house where there is no chiding.
New Help to Discourse, 1721, p. 134.
Wolves College.
i.e., The Rose Tavern. See Thoms’ Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 21.
Wolves in lambskins.
Part of the title of a volume issued by Anthony Munday in 1605.
Wolves lose their teeth, but not their memory.
This is curiously illustrated by the story in the Philosopher’s Banquet, 1614, which I printed in Faiths and Folklore, 1905—at least as regards the memory of wolves.
Women and dogs cause much strife.
Schole-house of Women, 1541 (Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, iv. 131), where it is called “the proverb olde.”
Women and hens, through too much gadding, are lost.
Women are saints in the church, angels in the street, devils in the kitchen, and apes in bed.
Middleton’s Blurt, Master Constable, 1602 (Works, 1840, i. 280). This saying is rather elaborately illustrated in Jacques Olivier’s work called L’Alphabet de l’ Imperfection des Femmes, first published about 1617.
Women are ships, and must be manned.
An Excellent Medley, a ballad printed about 1630 (Collier’s Broadside Black-letter Ballads, 1868, p. 122).
Women are the devil’s nets.
Comedy, &c., showing the Beauty and Good Properties of Women, &c. (circa 1520), fol. 3 verso. This is printed in the first volume of Hazlitt’s Dodsley.
Women commend a modest man, but like him not.
Women conceal all that they know not.
Women in mischief are wiser than men.
When the clue to any trouble is wanting, the French say: “Cherchez la femme!”
Women laugh when they can, and weep when they will.
See Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xiii. 141.
Women, money, and wine, / have their good and their pine.
Women must have their wills while they live, because they make none when they die.
This is one of the saws which legal changes have deprived of their truth and application.
Women think plaice a sweet fish.
Apparently a jeu de mot on the similarity of sound and form between plaice and the Latin place.
Women, wind, and fortune, are ever changing.
Women’s jars breed men’s wars.
Won with the egg and lost with the shell.
Won’t beguil’d the lady.
Wood Fidley rain. Hampshire.
Wise’s New Forest, 2nd ed., 1867, p. 79.
Wood half-burnt is easily kindled.
Wood in wilderness and strength in a fool.
Wooers and widows are never poor.
Ralph Roister Doister (1566).
Worcester, poor, proud, and pretty.
Words are but wind, but blows unkind.
[Greek].—R.
Words have long tails, and have no tails.
Words may pass, but blows fall heavy. Somersetshire.
Worse afeard than hurt.
Title, or subtitle rather, of a play produced in 1598.
Worth a Jew’s eye.
Perhaps this means the ransom of a Jew’s eye in the old days of persecution, what a Hebrew would give to save his eye.
Worth a plum.
It is said of a man who is accredited with large means that he is “worth a plum.” Tiene pluma. Span. The Spanish word pluma means wealth or a feather. Perhaps we get from the same language the phrase, “To feather one’s nest.”
Worth one’s weight in magpies. Cornwall.
Wotton under Weaver, / where God came never.
Leigh’s England Described, 1659, p. 179. “Wotton under Weaverhill (Staff.) is so much out of the sunshine that this rhime is common with the neighbours.”—England’s Gazetteer, 1751.
Would you be thanked for feeding your own swine?
Would you cut down Falkland-wood with a penknife?
Would you draw oil out of sand?
Would you dye a raven black?
Would you have potatoes grow by the pot-side?
Would you know what money is, go borrow some.
Would you thatch your house with pancakes?
Wranglers are never in the wrong.
Wraysbury.
It is a local saying connected with this place, in Buckinghamshire near Staines, when all is well, “From Wraysbury—where do you think?” in reply to an inquiry; but when the place is in floods, the form is: “From Wraysbury—God help me!” This is common to other places.
Wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch.
Wrinkled purses make wrinkled faces.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
Write with the learned, but speak with the vulgar.
Wroth as the wind.
Langland’s Poem on the Deposition of Richard II., Camd. Soc., 20.
Yarmouth for the sinners: / Cromer for the saints: / Lowestoft …
Four places are enumerated in a complete copy of this saying; but my informant had forgotten the rest. Not in Forby.
Ye be a baby of Beelzebub’s bower.
Ye be as full of good manners as an egg is of oatmeal.
Whitinton’s Vulgaria, 1520, cited in Bibliographer, Jan. 1882.
Ye came a clipping-time.
Ye cut afore the point.
Ye drive a snail to Rome.
Ye lean to the wrong shore.
Ye look liker a thief than a bishop.
Ye may keep y’re dry rubs for your watery p’taturs. Irish.
Ye ride a bootless errand.
Years know more than books.
Ye’d as lief go to mill as to mass.
Yeker that can’t scheme must louster. S. Devon and Corn.
Mr. Shelly observes: “He that cannot direct, must labour with his hands. Mr. Wedgwood thinks Yeker may be ‘thikky there;’ I know no other instance of the use of the word.” Probably Younker.
Yellow as a peigle. Kent.
Skeat’s ed. of Pegge’s Kenticisms, 100. This is substantially identical in sense with, As black [or pale] as a paigle, supra.
Yellow bellies.
An appellation given to persons born in the Fens.—R.
Yelping curs may anger mastiffs at last.
Ye’re early with your orders, as the bride said at the church door. Irish.
Ye’ve nails at wad scrat your granny out of her grave. Leeds.
York, you’re wanted.
See N. and Q., 3rd S., x. 355.
Yorkshire.
A term proverbially applied to a share in travelling expenses. “To do Yorkshire.”
You and I draw in the same yoke.
You are a fine fellow to fetch the devil a priest.
You are a man among the geese when the gander is away.
You are a man of Duresley. Gloucestershire.
This is taken for one that breaks his word and fails in performance of his promise; parallel to Fides Græca or Punica. Duresley is a market and clothing town in this county, the inhabitants whereof will endeavour to confute and disprove this proverb, to make it false now, whatsoever it was at the first original thereof.—R.
You are a pretty fellow to ride a goose a gallop through a dirty lane.
You are a sweet nut if you were well cracked.
You are all for the Hoistings.
Or, hustings. “It is spoken of those, who, by pride or passion, are elated or mounted to a pitch above the due proportion of their birth, quality, or estate. It cometh from Hustings, the principal and highest court in London (as also in Winchester, Lincoln, York, &c.); so called from the [A.S. hus, a house, and thing, a plea or cause—the Court of Pleas.]”—R.
You are always best when asleep.
You are an honest man, and I am your uncle; and that’s two lies.
You are hanging ripe.
You are in your roast-meat when others are in their sod.
You are like a cuckoo: you have but one song.
You are like a hog, never good while living.
You are like fig-tree fuel: much smoke and little fire.
You are like foul weather, you come unsent for, and troublesome when come.
You are mope-eyed by living so long a maid.
You are never well, full nor fasting.
You are not one of our paste.
You are on the high-road to Needham. Suffolk.
Needham is a market town in this county; according to the wit of the vulgar, they are said to be in the high-way thither which do hasten to poverty.—R.
You are one of those lawyers that never heard of Littleton.
You are saying the ape’s paternoster.
A kind of proverbial taunt to one whose teeth are chattering with cold.—D.
You are so cunning, you know not what weather it is when it rains.
You are very free of another man’s pottage.
You are well seen in crane’s dirt: your father was a poulter.
This appears to be cited as a proverbial phrase by Lyly in his Mother Bombie (Works, 1858, ii. 97): its import is obvious enough.
You ask an elm-tree for pears.
You been like Smithwick, either clemed or bossten. Cheshire.
See Wilbraham’s Cheshire Glossary, 1820, pp. 21–26.
You bestow water on a gate-post.
You bring a bit of wire and take away a bar.
You bring owls to Athens.
Noctuas Athenas.—Motto on the title of Drayton’s Owl, 1604.
You cackle often, but never lay an egg.
You came for wool, but shall return shorn yourself.
You can have no more of a cat than her skin.
i.e., The skin is the only valuable part.
You cannot both eat your cake and have your cake.
Vorrebbe mangiar il formagio e le trovar in tasca. Ital.
You cannot flay a stone.
You cannot hide an eel in a sack.
You cannot know wine by the barrel.
You cannot make a horn of a pig’s tail.
Parallel hereto is that of Apostolius, [Greek]. An ass’s tail will not make a sieve.—R.
You cannot make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.
De ruin paño nunca buen sayo. Span.—R.
You cannot make a windmill go with a pair of bellows.
You cannot say B to a battledore.
Humphrey King’s Pennyworth of Wit in Half a Pennyworth of Paper, 1613.
You cannot say Bo to a goose.
Ludus Ludi Literarius, 1672. Pref.
You cannot see the wood for trees.
You cannot spell Yarmouth steeple right.
Yarmouth spire being crooked or awry. This saying is likewise applied to Chesterfield spire in Derbyshire.—R.
You cannot tell: you are naught to keep sheep.
“Clare.Troth, sir … I cannot tell.
“Sear.And if you cannot tell, beauty, I take the adage for my reply: you are naught to keep sheep.”
—Wilkins, Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 1607 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, ix. 477).
You can’t fare well, but you must cry roast-meat.
Sasse bonne farine sans trompe ni buccine. Fr. Bolt thy fine meal, and eat good paste, without report or trumpet’s blast. [Greek]. They that are thirsty drink silently.
You can’t judge of the horse by the harness.
You can’t see green cheese, but your teeth must water.
You can’t sell the cow, and have her milk too.
You can’t whistle and drink at the same time.
You cast your net, but nothing was caught.