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A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Way
Teeth
Figurative
Following
Trite
Saws
Proverb
Example
Fitted
Saying
Wooden
Head
Examples
Called
Popularity
Makes
Popular
Colloquial

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
Ambrose Bierce
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A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
Ambrose Bierce
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Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.
Ambrose Bierce
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The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.
Ambrose Bierce
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DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.
Ambrose Bierce
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DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort.
Ambrose Bierce
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Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
Ambrose Bierce
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repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.
Ambrose Bierce
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OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer . . .
Ambrose Bierce
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OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.
Ambrose Bierce
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Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce
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POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
Ambrose Bierce
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Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
Ambrose Bierce
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FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs
Ambrose Bierce
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MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.
Ambrose Bierce
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A man is the sum of his ancestors to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.
Ambrose Bierce
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Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce