Proverb - Counter Proverbs

Counter Proverbs

There are often proverbs that contradict each other, such as "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost." These have been labeled "counter proverbs" When there are such counter proverbs, each can be used in its own appropriate situation, and neither is intended to be a universal truth.

The concept of "counter proverb" is more about pairs of contradictory proverbs than about the use of proverbs to counter each other in an argument. For example, the following pair are counter proverbs from Ghana "It is the patient person who will milk a barren cow" and "The person who would milk a barren cow must prepare for a kick on the forehead" The two contradict each other, whether they are used in an argument or not (though indeed they were used in an argument). But the same work contains an appendix with many examples of proverbs used in arguing for contrary positions, but proverbs that are not inherently contradictory, (pp. 157-171), such as "One is better off with hope of a cow's return than news of its death" countered by "If you don't know a goat you mock at its skin". Though this pair was used in a contradictory way in a conversation, they are not a set of "counter proverbs".

"Counter proverbs" are not the same as a "paradoxical proverb", a proverb that contains a seeming paradox.