On how proverbs mean in texts and as texts: an exploration of their semantic possibilities in conversation, drama, and the press. A definition is attempted; the problem of developing syntactic and semantic analyses for elliptical, formulaic, archaic/lectal, and syntactically anomalous proverbs is adressed; a small number of recurrent proverb figures is proposed and applied; and semantic relations of sameness, implication, and oppositeness between inventorized proverbs are investigated.