the.com/saying
Wisdom too lazy to cite its sources, so it blames everyone and no one.
means A short, memorable phrase that expresses a commonly held truth or piece of advice, passed along rather than argued for.
from From Old English 'secgan,' meaning simply 'to say' — the noun grew out of the verb, so a 'saying' is literally just 'a thing said.' Its path to meaning a proverb-like nugget of folk wisdom runs through Middle English, where 'sayings' became shorthand for the kind of thing elders said often enough that it hardened into received truth — no author required, just repetition.
- authorship
- nobody wrote it, somehow everyone agrees
- function
- ends arguments by sounding older than you
- survival trick
- vague enough to be right eventually
- origin myth
- often fake proverbs attributed to ancient cultures