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antiproverb

noun

Etymology

Coined by paremiologist Wolfgang Mieder in 1982, anti- + proverb.

Definitions

  1. A humorous adaptation of one or more existing proverbs.

    • The system isn’t broken. It’s fixed.¶ Another species of anti-proverb, this one plays on the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” which seems to have emerged in the 1960s.

  2. A proverb that contradicts another.

    • But for every proverb there is an antiproverb ("Too many cooks spoil the broth" vs. "Two heads are better than one," and so on).

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for antiproverb. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA