A treasury of more than 15, 000 sayings, adages, and maxims commonly used in popular speech in the U.S. and Canada. As the first major collection of proverbs in the English language based on oral sources rather than written sources, it includes thousands of uniquely American proverbs that have never before been recorded as well as many thousands of traditional sayings that have found their way into American speech from classical, biblical, British, continental European and American literature. Extensive bibliography lists both primary and secondary sources.