saying
Americannoun
-
sayings
plural
idioms
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of saying
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English (gerund); see say 1, -ing 1
Explanation
A short, common, and easy-to-remember phrase is a saying. When class ends right before your turn to give a speech, you might use the saying, "Saved by the bell!" A saying is basically the same as an aphorism, an adage, or a proverb, usually offering some kind of wisdom. If you accidentally break your sister's favorite teacup, you might think of the saying "To err is human, to forgive divine," which means that everyone makes mistakes but only truly remarkable people are able to forgive these mistakes. You should probably also remind yourself of the saying, "Honesty is the best policy."
Vocabulary lists containing saying
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Soon the menus are stacked, the pebbled Coke cups are sweating rings onto the table and somebody is pointing with a chip while saying, “No, no, tell her the part about —”
From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026
In 2019, Musk retweeted a fictional image of a vehicle hovering a few feet off the ground while saying the Roadster “will actually do something like this.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
He is also heard saying: "I have got four fingers thankfully."
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
San Jose Water Co., which serves about 1 million customers, disputed the group’s findings, saying it used “erroneously aggregated data to perform an analysis that grabs headlines.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The crying kits would have worked better for an itch, but Clare didn’t bother saying it.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
“He loved mixing everything together and celebrating life. One of his sayings was, ‘When in doubt, go flat out.’”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
The following year, Pulte even produced a slim volume annotating some of his grandfather’s sayings and quotations.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2026
Our physio was an ex-player, John Kirk, and what a great man he was - but really old-fashioned and with some wonderful sayings but no real qualifications.
From BBC ● Jan. 25, 2026
The Soviet Union was a land of shortages, but there was no shortage of acerbic sayings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 6, 2026
Mami quotes one of Chucha’s sayings, “‘No flies fly into a closed mouth.’”
From "Before We Were Free" by Julia Alvarez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
