This inquiry explores prosodic features of proverbs, as one type of formulaic expression, including tonal patterns and rate. Seven familiar proverbs and matched control sentences were spoken as naturalistically as possible by 15 Swedish females (10 adults, 5 children). Findings disclosed that tonal pattern distributions were notably different between sentence proverbs and matched control sentences, with proverbs generally displaying a ‘less stress’ tonal pattern, which may be interpreted as proverb specific. Proverbs were also spoken with a notably faster speech rate than control sentences. Children displayed a notably faster rate in proverbs known to them but displayed more variability in tonal patterns. The outcomes point out that proverbs have distinctive prosodic features when compared with recently created language. Implications for proposals of holistic storage and processing, the role of frequency of exposure, and a dual model of language are debated.