Sunday, July 26, 2009

Proverbs

The NY Times has a little section which I often enjoy reading -

Schott's Vocab

Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy. Each day, Schott's Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on a story of note. If language is the archives of history, as Emerson believed, then Schott’s Vocab is an attempt to index those archives on the fly.

This week Ben Schott has a Proverb contest which would be fun to think about. The challenge is to take a traditonal proverb and update it for modern times, or make up a completely new one, with reference if possible to current events. He gives a few examples to get us going :

A Rolling Stone gathers Kate Moss.
Actions speak louder than tweets.
Where there’s a will there’s a lawyer.
If you can’t stand the heat, get as far away from Gordon Ramsay as you can.

Readers have already offered some good ones. Not sure which is my favorite. Perhaps "Don't put all your nest-eggs in one basket."

If I come up with one of my own I'll add it. I'm going away to put my thinking cap on.



Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937)