Commonplace Examples From Adagia
Many of the adages have become commonplace in many European languages, and we owe our use of them to Erasmus. Among these in English are:
- Make haste slowly
- One step at a time
- To be in the same boat
- To lead one by the nose
- A rare bird
- Even a child can see it
- To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
- To walk on tiptoe
- One to one
- Out of tune
- A point in time
- I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
- To call a spade a spade
- Hatched from the same egg
- Up to both ears (Up to his eyeballs)
- As though in a mirror
- Think before you start
- What's done cannot be undone
- Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
- We cannot all do everything
- Many hands make light work
- A living corpse
- Where there's life, there's hope
- To cut to the quick
- Time reveals all things
- Golden handcuffs
- Crocodile tears
- To show the middle finger
- You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
- To walk the tightrope
- Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
- With a fair wind
- To dangle the bait
- To swallow the hook
- The bowels of the earth
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- From heaven to earth
- The dog is worthy of his dinner
- To weigh anchor
- To grind one's teeth
- Nowhere near the mark
- Complete the circle
- In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
- A cough for a fart
- No sooner said than done
- Neither with bad things nor without them (Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em)
- Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
- Like teaching an old man a new language (Can't teach an old dog new tricks)
- A necessary evil
- There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip
- To squeeze water out of a stone
- To leave no stone unturned
- Let the cobbler stick to his last (Stick to your knitting)
- God helps those who help themselves
- The grass is greener over the fence
- The cart before the horse
- Dog in the manger
- One swallow doesn't make a summer
- His heart was in his boots
- To sleep on it
- To break the ice
- Ship-shape
- To die of laughing
- To have an iron in the fire
- To look a gift horse in the mouth
- Neither fish nor flesh
- Like father, like son
- Not worth a snap of the fingers
- He blows his own trumpet
- To show one's heels
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