What common sayings are actually true?

50 comments

all cops are bastards
- I'm in London. What is this cop that you speak of?
  
  The feds.
  
  I'm in New York. What is this rozzer that you speak of?
  
  coppas

Prevention is better than cure
- An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
  
  This saying doesn’t work in most countries
- too much prevention and maybe the cure is better.
  
  Every rule has an exception. It doesn't magically make the rule wrong or dumb.

measure twice
cut once
- Measure once
  Cut ~~once~~ twice
  Measure again
  Cut another time
- hmm. I prefer to live by "I've cut it three times and it's still too short"
- I am an ardent believer in it, given how many times it has saved our assets at work, often to the point of annoying people. That said, I usually end up being right for insisting on more time and/or data, so it’s all good.
  However, my spoonerific brain always gets this twisted to “measure once, cut twice”.
  I unknowingly wrote this once in a comment about asking for more metrics during a design review.
  My colleague (the author of said design document) replied with the relevant metrics and a comment saying “measure never, cut forever”. :D
  
  measure never, cut forever
  Im stealing that xD that's a good one
- Beats "cut it 3 times and it's still too short" as my uncle said to me too many times... Along with "you hammer like old people fuck"
- Measure three times, cut zero times
  taps head

If it aint broke, don't fix it
- I'm not fixing it, I'm upgrading it.
  
  Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

haste does, indeed, make waste.

"A stitch in time saves nine"

Nothing is ever so bad it can't get worse.
Probably not a common saying, but it's my saying. And it has proven true time and again.

If it doesn't work, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
- Accidentally Capitalism towards workers?
- Upvoted because it is true by design.

Crap in crap out

All those things about your mom are true.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

Birds of a feather flock together
- Imagine a bunch of random and different birds in one flock...
  
  badass burd gang found family.
  how come DreamWorks hasn't made that movie already
  "Birds if a feather" coming soon
  
  The chaos lol
- Depends on the species. Some birds (usually birds of prey) are extremely territorial especially to members of their own species which are obviously their biggest competitors.

It is what it is.
- The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
- Not if i hold my breath,
  lactic acid, here I go
- ArE

Don't salt your food before you eat it.

Doveryay, no proveryay

Most have been true at some point. They all (most) have a reference to something that once made perfect sense.
For example: Pot calling the kettle black. Most kettles were black at one era in time. Now they can be different colors.
But here are some [more] modern ones:
'A 90s one: all that and a bag of chips' a slang saying originating in the nineties. however it can be classified as "true" since many people would get a free bag of chips with their meal and it was "sweet" or "cool" to get that hence someone who is all that and a bag of chips is "cool" or "sweet" in the sense that "sweet" is also a synonym for cool. The true origins being popularized by Public Enemy as a 'way to describe meals that black people used to eat' (Professor Griff
'The internet is dead' said when we get the nostalgic shock of an era no longer the golden age of internet. And it is true, many things that were great about old internet are now gone or modernized into a streamlined mess of paywalls and adblock-blockers. This one was explained to me at one point on YouTube.
They are called idioms in a sense because some of us can't help but feel uneducated when we cannot figure out what they mean or why that phrase would come to mean what it does. But it sure does make the past a bit more interesting. This last part is just a joke. I once heard a doctor explain what idiopathic meant to him as he stated "he feels like an idiot because he cannot find the out what the cause of something was" But Idiom means a phrase unique to language.
Edits: clarity and missing information.
- 'They are called idioms in a sense because some of us can't help but feel uneducated when we cannot figure out what they mean or why that phrase would come to mean what it does.'
  What? That is not why they are called idioms.
  You also misused or misunderstood the two idioms you used, and also listed the internet one, which isn't an idiom.
  
  Thank you for pointing that out. Do you know any modern idioms? I couldn't remember any but sayings. I was looking up sayings but a synonym is idioms though they are not perfect synonyms. That last part was just a joke. Mind the lack of "/s". I do apologize for my "mistakes". However OP asked about sayings and those "terms" classify as such. I could not find any modern idioms so I went with sayings as per OP's request. Yet I have recognized the difference, I apologize secondly for not explaining myself clearer. As for the meanings, that is what is colloquial in my experience and that is how they are used sometimes, rather than just the origin, which I could have added in there. I apologize for not adding the true origins as I was going off of straight knowledge and experience using them and hearing them used. Sayings, like words can evolve over time. Thank you again for the observations.
- Isn't the saying "Pot calling the kettle black"? I'm also not sure about the "all that and a bag of chips" -- it doesn't refer to getting free things, it means something similar to "the bee's knees".

Whoever said it was easier to destroy than to create never tried collecting their feces in jars for nine months.

50 comments