Proverbiality

For such a quatrain and couplet as the following it is scarcely hazardous to predict proverbiality:— They eat and drink and scheme and plod And go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God And more of Mrs. Grundy. . . . The Cockney met in Middlesex or Surrey Is often cold and always in a hurry.

The degree of proverbiality, or currency in oral tradition, attained by these exaggerations is difficult to assess.

Because other aspects are also seen as contributing to proverbiality—equivocation, authoritativeness, and negotiation of power relations—a text may be proverbial to various degrees.