Wellerism
English
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Alternative forms
- wellerism
Etymology
Weller + -ism, after the character Sam Weller in Charles Dickens' 1836 novel The Pickwick Papers.
Noun
Wellerism (plural Wellerisms)
- A proverb, often a fatuous one, attributed to speaker in a situation.
- 1939, The Modern Languages Forum, Volumes 24-25, Modern Language Association of Southern California, page 69:
- Examples of Romance Wellerisms are rather infrequent in literature and must be gathered from oral tradition.
- 1958, Midwest Folklore, Volume 8, Indiana University, page 160:
- An examination of recent literature for Wellerisms might prove productive.
- 1994, Wolfgang Mieder, Alan Dundes, The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the Proverb, University of Wisconsin Press, page 8:
- The Wellerism, which has its name from Sam Weller's use of many of them in Pickwick Papers, is much older than Dickens.
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Synonyms
- apologetic proverb
Translations
proverb
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See also
- Tom Swifty
Further reading
Wellerism on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Tom Swifty on Wikipedia.Wikipedia