old saw
old saw noun: a cliché, saying, or overused expression, especially a proverb or maxim.
Noun
old saw (plural old saws)
- A cliché, saying, or overused expression, especially a proverb or maxim.
- He's full of old saws, but he's not much for original advice.
- Never believe the old saw, "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't really there". Barry Miles remembers the 60s in vivid detail, down to the dress with "zebra stripes" that George Martin's wife wore at a dinner party given by Paul McCartney and Jane Asher in 1967, and he certainly was there.2010 March 20, James Campbell, “Barry Miles: 'I think of the 60s as a supermarket of ideas. We were looking for new ways to live'”, in The Guardian
- Synonyms:
- old chestnut, byword, saying, adage, saw, proverb, maxim, apothegm, apophthegm, dictum
Synonyms of old saw
Forms of old saw
| plural | old saws |
|---|
Origin of old saw
From Middle English olde sawe, old sawe, equivalent to old + saw (“a saying or proverb”).
Questions about old saw
- What does old saw mean?
- Old saw means a cliché, saying, or overused expression, especially a proverb or maxim.
- What part of speech is old saw?
- Old saw is a noun.
- What is the plural of old saw?
- The plural of old saw is old saws.
Words near old saw in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: old saw (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-old saw.ogg.
Cite this entry: “old saw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/old_saw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.