Avis Matutina Deprehendit Vermem
by Karen L. Oberst

  Proverbs, epigrams, maxims, adages--we all know those short pithy sayings from our childhood. Look before you leap. He who hesitates is lost. A stitch in time saves nine. The early bird gets the worm. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Measure twice, cut once. To err is human, to forgive divine.

This month I would like to take some of these and have fun with them. The idea for this came from a quote I stumbled across recently: "Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed." (William Jennings Bryan) I also got ideas from Frank Baehr's Be More Creative Quotation Pages. As an aside, if you have not visited his pages, you should. They are wonderful.

"Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed."

  The early bird catches the worm. The first proverb is: The member of the genus avis, which bestirs itself prior to others of its kind, will procure the elongated creature of the genus vermis. More prosaically: The early bird catches the worm. In Anguished English, Richard Lederer reports a sign from a mall that read, "The early bird gets the worm! Special shoppers' luncheon before 11 a. m."

Here are some other restatements:

  • The late worm lives longer.
  • The early bird may get the worm…but the late night bird gets the cold pizza. (Jeff MacNelly, "Shoe" 7/22/98)
  • The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. (Contributed by a subscriber of the Quote of the Day mailing list)
  • "No thanks, I'd rather sleep in and have a donut."
  • "I told you…the early bird catches the bus." (Charles Schulz, "Peanuts" 7/25/98) Said by Snoopy to Woodstock and his friends as they stand forlornly on the curb in the rain.
  • The early worm gets caught. (John Igo)
  • I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. (Franklin Roosevelt)

    If you would like to take this as your motto, the Latin version of the maxim is the title of this article.

  •   A proverb that is almost too easy to play with is "To err is human, to forgive divine." (Probabley originally from Alexander Pope) A few quick variations are:

  • To eat is human, to digest divine. (Mark Twain)
  • To err is human, but to really foul up requires a computer. (Paul Ehrlich)
  • To err is human, to purr feline. (Robert Bryne)
  • To err is human, to moo bovine. (Unknown)
  • To err is human--but it feels divine. (Mae West)
  • To tear is human, to repair divine.
  • To err is human, to forgive divine.

      He who hesitates is lost. Another proverb is: the one who vacillates, shows irresolution and is otherwise indecisive, will deviate from his course and go astray. Or, expressed another way: Is dubitat errat. He who hesitates is lost.

  • He who hesitates is sometimes saved. (James Thurber)
  • He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit. (Unknown)
  • He who hesitates gives somebody else time to jump in and make a fool of himself.
  • He who hesitates may see more clearly the way to go.
  • He who contemplates is lost in thought.
  • He who circumnavigates is right back where he started. Or, he who circumnavigates ultimately gets nowhere.
  •   Pip and Jane Baker, a British husband and wife writing team, created a bunch of mixed-up proverbs for a television episode called "Time and the Rani." As confused as these are, many of them still somehow make sense.

  • Time and tide melt the snowman.
  • Where there's a will, there's a Tom, Dick, and Harriet.
  • More hasta, less vista.
  • Two wrongs don't make a left turn.
  • A miss is as good as a smile.
  • Out of the frying pan, into the mire.
  • Other Mixed-Up Proverbs

      A few more "malaproverbs" And to finish up, here are few more "malaproverbs."
  • A feather in the hand is better than a bird in the air. (Geoge Herbert)
  • A bird in the hand is a messy proposition.
  • Two birds in the bush sing more sweetly than one in the hand.

  • A fool and her money are soon courted. (Helen Rowland)
  • A fool and his money are soon partying. (Unknown)
  • How did the fool and his money get together in the first place? (Unknown)

  • He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news. (Bertolt Brecht)
  • He who laughs, lasts. (Mary Pettibone Poole)
  • He who laughs last didn't get the joke the first time. (Unknown)
  • He who cries first, gets all the sympathy.
  •   Have I whetted your appetite for this word game? Jump on in, the water's wet...er, fine. Grab a proverb, twist it up, and all the day, you'll have good luck. Have fun, but be careful--this can be habit forming! Grab a proverb, twist it up, and all the day, you'll have good luck.

    Copyright © 1998 by Karen L. Oberst

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