Editing Proverb (section)

==Sources==
[[File:Conseil Tenu par les Rats.jpg|thumb|"Who will bell the cat?", comes from the end of a story.]]

Proverbs come from a variety of sources.<ref>Barbour, Frances M. "Some uncommon sources of proverbs." ''Midwest Folklore'' 13.2 (1963): 97–100.</ref> Some are, indeed, the result of people pondering and crafting language, such as some by [[Confucius]], [[Plato]], [[Baltasar Gracián]], etc. Others are taken from such diverse sources as poetry,<ref>Korosh Hadissi. 2010. A Socio-Historical Approach to Poetic Origins of Persian Proverbs. ''Iranian Studies'' 43.5: 599–605.</ref><ref>p. 164. Bartlotti, Leonard and Raj Wali Shah Khattak. ''Rohi Mataluna: Pashto Proverbs''. Peshawar, Paksitan: Interlit.</ref> stories,<ref>Thamen, Hla. 2000. ''Myanmar Proverbs in Myanmar and English''. Yangon: Pattamya Ngamank Publishing.</ref> songs, commercials, advertisements, movies, literature, etc.<ref name="Doyle, Charles Clay 2012">Doyle, Charles Clay, Wolfgang Mieder, [[Fred R. Shapiro]]. 2012. ''The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.'' New Haven: Yale University Press.</ref> A number of the well known sayings of Jesus, Shakespeare, and others have become proverbs, though they were original at the time of their creation, and many of these sayings were not seen as proverbs when they were first coined. Many proverbs are based on stories, often the end of a story. For example, the proverb "[[Belling the cat|Who will bell the cat]]?" is from the end of a story about the mice planning how to be safe from the cat.<ref>p. 68. Kent, Graeme. 1991. ''Aesop's Fables.'' Newmarket, UK: Brimax.</ref>

Some authors have created proverbs in their writings, such as [[J.R.R. Tolkien]],<ref name="Michael Stanton 1996"/><ref name="Trokhimenko, Olga 2003"/> and some of these proverbs have made their way into broader society. Similarly, C. S. Lewis is credited for a proverb regarding a lobster in a pot, which he wrote about in his book series ''[[Chronicles of Narnia]]''.<ref>Peter Unseth. 2014. A created proverb in a novel becomes broadly used in society: "‛Easily in but not easily out', as the lobster said in his lobster pot." ''Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies'' [http://www.crossroads.uwb.edu.pl/category/issue-22014/page/2/ online access] {{webarchive |url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150526192406/http://www.crossroads.uwb.edu.pl/category/issue-22014/page/2/ |date=2015-05-26}}</ref> In cases like this, deliberately created proverbs for fictional societies have become proverbs in real societies. In a fictional story set in a real society, the movie ''Forrest Gump'' introduced "Life is like a box of chocolates" into broad society.<ref>p. 70, Winick, Stephen. 1998. ''The Proverb Process: Intertextuality and Proverbial Innovation in Popular Culture.'' University of Pennsylvania: PhD dissertation.</ref> In at least one case, it appears that a proverb deliberately created by one writer has been naively picked up and used by another who assumed it to be an established Chinese proverb, [[Ford Madox Ford]] having picked up a proverb from [[Ernest Bramah]], "It would be hypocrisy to seek for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a Low Tea House."<ref>Hawthorn, Jeremy, ‘Ernest Bramah: Source of Ford Madox Ford’s Chinese Proverb?’ Notes and Queries, 63.2 (2016), 286–288.</ref>

The proverb with "a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world", going back to "around 1800 BC"<ref>p. 5. Alster, Bendt. 1979. An Akkadian and a Greek proverb. A comparative study. ''Die Welt des Orients'' 10. 1–5.</ref> is in a Sumerian clay tablet, "The bitch by her acting too hastily brought forth the blind".<ref>p. 17. Moran, William L. 1978a. An Assyriological gloss on the new Archilochus fragment. ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'' 82. 17–19.</ref><ref>Unseth, Peter. "The World’s Oldest Living Proverb Discovered Thriving in Ethiopia." ''Aethiopica'' 21 (2018): 226–236.</ref> Though many proverbs are ancient, they were all newly created at some point by somebody. Sometimes it is easy to detect that a proverb is newly coined by a reference to something recent, such as the Haitian proverb "The fish that is being microwaved doesn't fear the lightning".<ref>p. 325, Linda Tavernier-Almada. 1999. Prejudice, power, and poverty in Haiti: A study of a nation's culture as seen through its proverbs. ''Proverbium'' 16:325–350.</ref> Similarly, there is a recent [[Maltese language|Maltese]] proverb, ''wil-muturi, ferh u duluri'' "Women and motorcycles are joys and griefs"; the proverb is clearly new, but still formed as a traditional style couplet with rhyme.<ref>p. 125. Aquilina, Joseph. 1972. ''A Comparative Dictionary of Maltese Proverbs.'' Malta: Royal University of Malta.</ref> Also, there is a proverb in the [[Kafa language]] of Ethiopia that refers to the forced military conscription of the 1980s, "...the one who hid himself lived to have children."<ref>Mesfin Wodajo. 2012. ''Functions and Formal and Stylistic Features of Kafa Proverbs''. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.</ref> A Mongolian proverb also shows evidence of recent origin, "A beggar who sits on gold; Foam rubber piled on edge."<ref>p. 22, Janice Raymond. ''Mongolian Proverbs: A window into their world.'' San Diego: Alethinos Books.</ref> Another example of a proverb that is clearly recent is this from [[Sesotho]]: "A mistake goes with the printer."<ref>Rethabile M Possa-Mogoera. The Dynamism of Culture: The Case of Sesotho Proverbs." ''Southern African Journal for Folklore Studies'' Vol. 20 (2) October.</ref>  A political candidate in Kenya popularised a new proverb in his 1995 campaign, ''Chuth ber'' "Immediacy is best". "The proverb has since been used in other contexts to prompt quick action."<ref>p. 68. Okumba Miruka. 2001. ''Oral Literature of the Luo''. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.</ref> Over 1,400 new English proverbs are said to have been coined and gained currency in the 20th century.<ref>Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, Fred R. Shapiro. 2012. ''The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.''  Yale University Press.</ref>

This process of creating proverbs is always ongoing, so that possible new proverbs are being created constantly. Those sayings that are adopted and used by an adequate number of people become proverbs in that society.<ref>p. 5. Wolfgang Mieder. 1993. ''Proverbs are never out of season.'' New York: Oxford University Press.</ref><ref>Mieder, Wolfgang. 2017. Futuristic Paremiography and Paremiology: A Plea for the Collection and Study of Modern Proverbs. ''Poslovitsy v frazeologicheskom pole: Kognitivnyi, diskursivnyi, spoostavitel’nyi aspekty''. Ed. T.N. Fedulenkova. Vladimir: Vladimirskii Gosudarstvennyie Universitet, 2017. 205–226.</ref>
[[File:A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss.jpg|thumb|A rolling stone gathers no moss.]]

The creation of proverbs in many parts of the world during the Corona-virus era showed how quickly proverbs and anti-proverbs can be created.<ref>Haas, Heather A. "The Proverbs of a Pandemic: The Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic Viewed through the Lens of Google Trends." ''Journal of American Folklore'' 135, no. 535 (2022): 26-48.</ref><ref>Mawere, Munyaradze. "Epistemological and Moral Aspects of Selected Shona Proverbial Lore: Implications for Health and Safety in the Face of Covid-19 and Other Such Pandemics." ''Being and Becoming African as a Permanent Work in Progress: Inspiration from Chinua Achebe’s Proverbs'' (2021): 363-377.</ref><ref>Raji-Oyelade, Aderemi. "COVID-19 (Post) Proverbials: Twisting the Word Against the Virus." ''Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship'' 39, no. 1 (2022): 224-244.</ref>