wellerism, named after Sam Weller from Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, is a triad that consists of a statement, an identification of a speaker, and a phrase that places the statement into an unexpected situation. An example: "Every evil is followed by some good," the man said when his wife died the day after he became bankrupt.
anti-proverb or perverb. This is a misuse or adaptation of a familiar proverb to twist or change its meaning. Examples include: "Nerds of a feather flock together," "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and likely to talk about it," and "Absence makes the heart grow wander." Anti-proverbs are common on T-shirts, such as "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you." Even classic Latin proverbs can be remolded as anti-proverbs, such as "Carpe noctem" from "Carpe per diem." Anti-proverbs are not new; Aristophanes is credited with creating one over 2,300 years ago.
proverbial expression, such as "to bite the dust." This is not strictly a proverb, which should be a fixed unchangeable sentence; a proverbial expression permits alteration to fit the grammar of the context.
allusion, which is a reference to a proverb rather than a statement of the proverb. An example: "The new boss will probably fire some of the old staff, you know what they say about a new broom." This allusion refers to the proverb "A new broom sweeps clean."
To make the respective statement more general most proverbs are based on a metaphor. Further typical features of the proverb are its shortness and the fact that its author is generally unknown.
Interpretations from other languages
In the article "Tensions in Proverbs: More Light on International Understanding", Joseph Raymond comments on what common Russian proverbs from the 18th and 19th centuries portray: Potent antiauthoritarian proverbs reflected tensions between the Russian people and the Czar. The rollickingly malicious undertone of these folk verbalizations constitutes what might be labeled a "paremiological revolt". To avoid openly criticizing a given authority or cultural pattern, folk take recourse to proverbial expressions which voice personal tensions in a tone of generalized consent. Proverbs that speak to the political disgruntlement include: "When the Czar spits into the soup dish, it fairly bursts with pride"; "If the Czar be a rhymester, woe be to the poets"; and "The hen of the Czarina herself does not lay swan's eggs". While none of these proverbs state directly, "I hate the Czar and detest my situation", they do get their points across. Proverbs are found in many parts of the world, but some areas seem to have richer stores of proverbs than others, while others have hardly any .
Users of proverbs
Proverbs are used by speakers for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they are used as a way of saying something gently, in a veiled way. Other times, they are used to carry more weight in a discussion, a weak person is able to enlist the tradition of the ancestors to support his position, or even to argue a legal case. Proverbs can also be used to simply make a conversation/discussion more lively. In many parts of the world, the use of proverbs is a mark of being a good orator.
Uses of paremiology
The study of proverbs has application in a number of fields. Clearly, those who study folklore and literature are interested in them, but scholars from a variety of fields have found ways to profitably incorporate the study proverbs. For example, they have been used to study abstract reasoning of children, acculturation of immigrants, intelligence, the differing mental processes in mental illness, cultural themes, etc. Proverbs have also been incorporated into the strategies of social workers, teachers, preachers, and even politicians. There are collections of sayings that offer instructions on how to play certain games, such as dominoes and the Oriental board gamego. However, these are not prototypical proverbs in that their application is limited to one domain.
Folklore
One of the most important developments in the study of proverbs was the shift to more ethnographic approaches in the 1960s. This approach attempted to explain proverb use in relation to the context of a speech event, rather than only in terms of the content and meaning of the proverb.
Cognitive science
Another important development in scholarship on proverbs has been applying methods from cognitive science to understand the uses and effects of proverbs and proverbial metaphors in social relations.
