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RONALD R. BUTTERS is a past editor of AmErican Speech and PADS. He is also aformer president of the American Dialect Society, southeastern conferenceon Linguistics, and International Association of Forensic Linguists. lle was aprofessor (now emeritus) at Duke University, 1967-zoo7, where he taughtcourses in the English Department, the cultural Anthropology Deparrment,and the Linguistics Program. since r gBo, he has submitted 3oo+ reports andtestified 6o+ times in legal proceedings, mostly about meanings of worcls.,He and his spouse of'35 years, Stewart Aycock, make their home with theirchihuahua in Naples, Florida. E-mail: ronbutters@icloud.com.oot ro.t z r 5 / ctoo3, r 283-zqr47 r4

PRESENT AT THE CREATION, PROVERBIALLYThe Dictionary of Modern Prouerbs

Compiled by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Miedeq and Fred R. ShapiroNew Haven, Conn.: Yale University press, zor z. pp. xiv + 294.

ISBN 978-o-3oo-r 36oz-9; $35.oo

Reviewed byIETE UNSETH, C,raduate Institute of Applied Linguistics

Many collections of English proverbs exist, but as has repeatedly beenobserved, these are always out of date, being largely based on old sources,preserving and presenting many proverbs that have fallen out of use. Thoughnew proverbs are being coined constantly, they are not added quickly tothe "canonical" proverb collections. so Archer Taylor asked, "How nearlycomplete are the collections of proverbs?" (rg6g).\A/hiting published Mod_ern Prouerbs and Proaerbial sayings in r98g, drawing largely from proverbshe encountered in his vast reading, but that was a compilation of proverbsthen in use, not necessarily new proverbs. The volume under review fills agap fbr us by recording for the first time many twentieth-centufy proverbcreations.

Each proverb included in this volume was first documented fr,rrr r gocror later, into the twenty-first century. For instance, "If it exists, there is pornof it" is cited as being first attested in print in zo r o in a Montreal newspaper,but they admit "the proverb began appearing on Internet postings in zoog."This practice of dating a proverb by the first published attestation points roa new and growing dilemma: what should be done with less formal Internet

r r8 AMERTCAN SPEECH go.r (2or5)citations that may not include dates? Other entries anchored in print evi-dence for earliest attestations also point to prior-and undated-usage onbumper stickers, T:shirts, and the like. The book lists a website where read-ers can submit additional proverbs and attestations (www.yalebooks.com/modernproverbs), but the site was not yet functioning when this review waswritten.

The compilers explain that they have "included only what folklorists call'true proverbs"' (xi), screening out such not-quite-proverbs as wellerisms ("Isee said the blind man"), sarcastic questions (e.9., "Is the Pope Catholic?"),and proverbial comparisons (e.9., "Older than dirt"), a position I applaud,though I wish they had been firmer in this. Also, they did not include a num-ber of inadequately attested sayings. Even within these limits, they still claimover l ,4oo new proverbs, though some of these may not be "true proverbs. ""Dot-com, dot-bomb," for example, highlights the volatility of some partsof the financial sector; it would be much easier to accept its classificationas a "true proverb" if there were examples of it being used outside of thefinancial world and in metaphorical ways. Others less-than-true prciverbs,of simiarly narrow application, include "Don't eat yellow snow," 'A rollingloan gathers no loss," "Don't get high on your own supply," and the sexual"If there's grass on the field, play ball." An example from a narrow field thathas gained broader metaphorical use and has thus moved toward proverbstatus is the golf saying "Drive for show, putt for dough," which in broaderusage "refers to the importance of non-glamorous aspects of a process orenterprise." Though the three compilers are all in the United States, theywere able to compile EnglishJanguage examples from all over the English-speaking world by using the Internet. Building on Shapiro's research intomining the web for quotations, the editors discovered and documentedmany of their tlventieth-century proverbs and attestations by electronicsearches of various databases drawing from newspapers, academic journals,government documents, and the like. They have shown that many sorts ofproverbial nuggets can be mined this way, so that any such proverb studiesin the future will have to include this new best practice.

It is fascinating how many different kinds of sources are listed as first at-testations of proverbs: songs, commercials, sports coaches, novels;newspaperfillers, cartoons, testimony before a government committee, and even a na\ychaplain's repeated phrase ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition").

As with any reference book, reading the front matter is helpful, and inthis case, vital, as it explains the system by which proverbs are alphabetized.The same basic system has also been used in other proverb collections, butit is not always easy to use. But searching for a particular proverb inevitablyleads to the discovery of otherjoys on the way.

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Any proverb dictionary has to list each proverb in a standard form, evenif the saying is known and used in various forms. The compilers have dealtwith this problem well, alphabetizing by "key word" as well as the first nounor first finite verb, and using two different techniques to handle variantsof the same proverb. The first is to alphabetize a proverb by both the firstnoun and the key word, noting the cross-reference within each entry. Forexample, "Live fast (hard), die young" carries the note, "See 'Live fast, dieyoung, leave a good-looking coRpsE" (emphases as in original), thus direct-ing attention to the other entry. The other technique for citing variants ofproverb forms is the careful use of parentheses and commas, as in "If frogshad wings, they wouldn't bump their tails (butts, etc.) on rocks (logs, theground, etc.). (If frogs had wings, they could fly.)" Also, since readers maynot always correctly gue ss what key word is used in alphabetizing a proverb,the compilers also provide directions to the keyword thatwill lead readers toit, as in "Nice doesn't win games. See 'Nrcn doesn't win games"' (emphasesas in original).

One small disappointment with this book is the lack of adequate in-formation as to the quantity of the citations. For example, the citations for"Nothing is as easy as it looks" (with variants) nearly fills half a page withsix citations. This convinces readers that the proverb is well established. Incontrast, "You can't kill shit" is cited from a novel, and the second citationof it is by the same author. Are these the only known citations? This raisesquestions as to how widely this proverb has actually spread and been used.(A quick Google search finds it now quoted numerous times, though, onceagain, we are left with a question of how to evaluate Internet citations.)

Some of the proverbs appear in two similar, but contradictory forms, whatDoyle has called "counter proverbs." 'A messy (cluttered) desk is a sign ofa messy mind (person) " was first attested in t 97 4, but 'A messy (cluttered)desk is a sign of intelligence (brilliance, genius... etc.) " was first attested inr 973. The related 'A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind" was also was first at-tested in r973. Similarly, we find "Life is a bowl of cherries" and "Life is nota bowl of cherries, " both dated from r 93 r . Nobody can be positive whichversion actually came first, but it is interesting that such contradictory formsappeared so close to each other.

Mieder once observed that "Anti-proverbs obviously reveal much aboutthe mores and worldview of modern people 1...] at least some anti-proverbs[...] enter the proverbial canon as new and appropriate wisdom" (Mieder2oo8, r r 6). It is not surprising, then, that many of the new, modern proverbslisted here are anti-proverbs that play off of established ones. For example,"Home is where the mortgage is," reflecting a too-familiar aspect of modernlife, is explicitly credited as being an anti-proverb based on "Home is where

L20 AMERTCAN SPEECH go.r (2or5)the heart is. " Even some proverbs that first appeared in the twentieth centuryare recorded as having already given birth to anti-proverbs, as with 'Act yourage" ( r9z5), followed by'Actyour age, notyour shoe size" ( r967), then 'Actyour age, notyour IQ" (tggf).

Of course, like me every reader will think of some proverb he or shebelieves the compilers have failed to include. Before such readers claim thatthey have found an overlooked nugget, they should consult the appendixthat lists about 2bo "no longer 'modern' proverbs." This appendix surprisedme as it contains sayings that, despite my assumptions of twentieth-centuryorigins, were older, including, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damnedIies, and statistics," "Love them and leave them," and "Give a man a fish, andhe will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." In theopposite direction, I was startled to find that some proverbs I had assumedto be much older were first attested in the twentieth century, including "Arising tide lifts all boats" and "The squeaking wheel gets the grease."

Regarding the link between proverbs and culture, Mieder also observed"proverbs come and go, that is, antiquated proverbs with messages and im-ages we no longer relate to are dropped from our proverb repertoire, whilenew proverbs are created to reflect the mores and values of our time" ( t 993,r4). I tested this collection of modern proverbs to see if it could be used tomeasure the rise of new proverbs "created to reflect the mores and values ofour time" by examining "mores and values" related to casual sex, an aspectof society that underwent large changes starting around the mid-r96os. Inoted all the proverbs that reflected casual attitudes toward sex, labelingthem by first year of attestation. I classified 48 proverbs as reflecting a casualattitude toward sex (e.9., "There's no such thing as too much sex"). In the first6o years of the century, there were only rz. In the rg6os, when the sexualrevolution exploded, there were 1z new ones attested in that single decade.Many others followed in the succeeding decades. In the case of changing"mores and values" about sex, then, the Dictionary of Modern Proaerbs clearlylinks social change and the emergence of proverbs, just as Mieder predicts.This sort of detailed research on the dating of proverbs and their reflectionof culture would not be oossible with anv of the usual collections of newEnglish proverbs.

There are several collections of English proverbs on the market, but thisone, with its unique twentieth-century focus of new proverbs, is unique. Itwill be a standard tool for proverb scholars. Also, English departments at anycollege or university will want this available for their faculty and students tostudy recent changes in English usage.

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REFERENCES

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Mieder, Wolfgang. l gg3. Proaerbs Are Neuer Out of Season: PopularWisdom in the ModnnAge. New York: Oxford University Press.

zoo8. "Prouerbs Speak Loudr than Worels": Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folhlore,History, Literature and Mass Media.NewYork: Peter Lang.

Tayloq Archer. r969. "How Nearly Complete Are the Collections of Proverbs?" Pro-anbium r4: g5g-7r.

Whiting, BartlettJere. rg8g. Modnn Prouerbs and Prounbial Salings. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.

Proverbs are one of eETE UNSETH's major interests, an interest sparked by thechildhood memory of theJapanese proverb "Even a monkey can fall from atree" as he grew up inJapan. His interest grew as he worked for a dozenyearsin Ethiopia, a couiltry with proverbs about proverbs. He teaches a course inOral Traditions and Literature at the Graduate Institute ofApplied Linguis-tics in Dallas. His varied education includes Moody Bible Institute and theUniversity of Texas at Arlington. E-mail: pete_unseth@gial.edu.nor ro.r z r 5 / ooo3 r 283-zgr 47 z 5