Word.ws English Dictionary

anti-proverb

anti-proverb is the alternative form of antiproverb.

Meaning of antiproverb

Noun

antiproverb (plural antiproverbs)

  1. A humorous adaptation of one or more existing proverbs.
    • The system isn’t broken. It’s fixed.¶ Another species of anti-proverb, this one plays on the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” which seems to have emerged in the 1960s.2015 April 16, David Shariatmadari, “Are these 11 proverbs for the digital age?”, in The Guardian
  2. A proverb that contradicts another.
    • But for every proverb there is an antiproverb ("Too many cooks spoil the broth" vs. "Two heads are better than one," and so on).1987, Howard Margolis, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of Judgment, page 92

Forms of anti-proverb

pluralanti-proverbs

Questions about anti-proverb

What is anti-proverb the alternative form of?
Anti-proverb is the alternative form of antiproverb.

Words near anti-proverb in the dictionary

  1. anti-politics
  2. anti-porner
  3. anti-porners
  4. anti-predator
  5. anti-progress
  6. anti-proverb
  7. anti-proverbs
  8. anti-Putinism
  9. anti-Putinist
  10. anti-Putinists
  11. anti-racial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anti-proverb (page history and authors); antiproverb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “anti-proverb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anti-proverb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.