Contextualizebeta

old saw

noun

Etymology

From Middle English olde sawe, old sawe, equivalent to old + saw (“a saying or proverb”).

  1. inherited from olde sawe,old sawe

Definitions

  1. A cliché, saying, or overused expression, especially a proverb or maxim.

    • He's full of old saws, but he's not much for original advice.
    • 2017, Andrew Marantz, "Becoming Steve Bannon's Bannon", The New Yorker, Feb 13&20 ed. There’s an old saw about Washington, D.C., that staffers in their twenties know more about the minutiae of government than their bosses do.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for old saw. 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