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Proverbial   /prəvˈərbiəl/   Listen
adjective
Proverbial  adj.  
1.
Mentioned or comprised in a proverb; used as a proverb; hence, commonly known; as, a proverbial expression; his meanness was proverbial. "In case of excesses, I take the German proverbial cure, by a hair of the same beast, to be the worst."
2.
Of or pertaining to proverbs; resembling a proverb. "A proverbial obscurity."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Proverbial" Quotes from Famous Books



... A Tale of Two Cities is not wrongly named. It is his most typical contact with the civic ideals of Europe. All his other tales have been tales of one city. He was in spirit a Cockney; though that title has been quite unreasonably twisted to mean a cad. By the old sound and proverbial test a Cockney was a man born within the sound of Bow bells. That is, he was a man born within the immediate appeal of high civilisation and of eternal religion. Shakespeare, in the heart of his fantastic forest, turns with a splendid suddenness ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... colony; tobacco and cotton were to be its staples, but the latter had not at this epoch been attempted. Order and propriety among the colonists were assured by penalties on gaming, drunkenness, and sloth; and the better to guard against the proverbial wiles of Satan, a university was sketched out, and direction was given that such children of the heathen as showed indications of latent talent should be caught, tamed and instructed, and employed as missionaries among their tribes. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like the proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man—even such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen—made me as nervous as a school-girl ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... disgruntled men on a ship can shoot morale to hell, and on a ship this size the Exec is the morale officer. But I was torn between two desires. I wanted Allyn to go on, but I didn't want to hear what Allyn had to say. I was like the proverbial hungry mule standing halfway between two haystacks of equal size and attractiveness. And like the mule I would stand there turning my head one way and the other ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... to Aristophanes, though I cannot find it there. It is observable that this proverbial kind of expression, for freedom of words and sentiments, has been adopted into almost every language, though the image conveying it is different. Thus the Greeks call a fig a fig, etc. We say, an honest man calls a spade a ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian


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