Òwe on Ọ̀rọ̀ and Ẹnu: Speech, Silence, and the Tongue
Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on speech, silence, and the tongue, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
intermediatehigh·
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Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on speech, silence, and the tongue, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
The mouth appears in Yorùbá proverbs as a physical organ with a job that is dangerous by nature: it eats, and it speaks, and both are appetites that can destroy the person who owns them. This file collects forty-eight proverbs in which speech, silence, or the tongue itself is the subject: talk that heals and talk that wounds worse than a blade, the discipline of saying nothing, what a person's manner of speaking gives away about them, and the practical etiquette of knowing when a word is owed and when it is better withheld. Read together, the set treats the mouth less as a communication channel than as a weapon that is always loaded, one a careful person learns to holster.
The proverbs are given in Owomoyela's texts and translations unless another source is named. Owomoyela's parenthetical usage notes are the basis of the Used when lines; where the wording of a note is his, it is quoted. Anything marked as the compiler's is this corpus's own and carries lower confidence.
Owomoyela prints full standard orthography with tone marks and subdots, and his texts are reproduced here as printed . Following the practice of owe-iwa-character, Owomoyela does not attach named informants to individual proverbs, treating them as communal property rather than as sayings traceable to one person, so the entries below are attested but not localised except where the text itself names a place or a historical figure.
Two entries in Owomoyela's collection that were reviewed for this file had their usage notes cut off by a page break in the source scan and could not be recovered in full (entries 396 and 4969 in his numbering). Both were dropped rather than completed by guesswork. A small number of other entries carry stray OCR page markers in the scanned edition consulted; where that affected only formatting and not the substance of the Yorùbá or the translation, the marker is simply omitted here rather than reproduced.
Literal: Ahọ́n the-tongue ni ìpínnlẹ̀ is-the-border ẹnu of-the-mouth.
Idiomatic: "The tongue is the border of the mouth."
Meaning: Where the tongue ends is where the mouth's territory ends too; some things simply stop at a line.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is a limit to everything"
Notes: The proverb states a plain anatomical fact and lets it carry a general claim about limits without any further machinery. Ìpínnlẹ̀ is a border or boundary in the ordinary territorial sense, so the tongue is cast as a frontier post, the last thing before the mouth's authority runs out. Placed first in a set about speech, it reads as a warning that the tongue itself is not limitless power, however dangerous the entries that follow make it out to be.
Literal: Ẹnu àìmẹ́nu a-mouth-that-will-not-close, ètè àìmétè lips-that-will-not-close, ní ḿmú ọ̀ràn bá ẹ̀rẹ̀kẹ are-what bring trouble to-the-cheek.
Idiomatic: "A mouth that will not stay shut, lips that will not stay closed are what bring trouble to the cheeks."
Meaning: An unguarded mouth invites the blow that lands on the cheek beside it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The words that the mouth and lips allow to escape usually bring the slap to the cheek; a person who cannot keep his or her mouth shut often lands in trouble"
Notes: The negated construction àìmẹ́nu, "not-closing-mouth," is built on mẹ́nu, to close the mouth, with the àì- prefix that turns a verb into an abstract failure-noun. The proverb's logic is purely physical: the cheek is punished because it is the mouth's next-door neighbour, collateral damage for an organ that would not stay shut.
Literal: Ẹyin egg lọ̀rọ̀ is-speech; bó bá balẹ̀ if-it falls-to-ground fífọ́ ní ńfọ breaking is-what-it-does.
Idiomatic: "Words are eggs; when they drop on the floor, they shatter into pieces."
Meaning: Once spoken, a word cannot be gathered back whole.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Words are delicate things; once spoken, they cannot be retrieved"
Notes: The image works because an egg is fragile in a way that is total and one-directional: there is no partial breaking and no unbreaking. Compare entry 22 below (Ọ̀rọ̀ púpọ̀ ò kún agbọ̀n), which treats words as bulk that fails to accumulate into anything; here the concern is not volume but fragility, a complementary rather than contradictory anxiety about the same substance.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ púpọ̀ many words ò kún agbọ̀n does-not fill a-basket; irọ́ ní ḿmú wá lies is-what-it brings.
Idiomatic: "A lot of words will not fill a basket; they will only lead to lies."
Meaning: Talking at length produces no substance, only the risk of falsehood.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Brevity is wise in discussions; wordiness leads to invention"
Notes: Agbọ̀n, a basket, is the standard Yorùbá measure of bulk goods, so the proverb makes a category claim: words are not the kind of thing that adds up into a fillable container, however many of them accumulate. The consequence named, irọ́, lies, follows a real observation about talk under pressure to keep going: a speaker who has run out of true things to say invents.
Literal: A-le-koko-bí-ọsán a-thing-as-tough-as-bowstring: egbòó jinná the-ulcer heals, ohùn ò jinná the-word does-not heal.
Idiomatic: "A thing as resistant as bowstring: the ulcer heals, but a spoken word does not heal."
Meaning: Physical wounds close; the damage a word does stays open.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Words are as tough as bowstrings; while wounds may heal, the marks words leave do not heal"
Notes: Jinná is used of a wound closing over and also, elsewhere in Yorùbá, of food becoming fully cooked; either sense supports "reaching completion." The compound epithet a-le-koko-bí-ọsán, "one-as-tough-as-a-bowstring," is stated first and left to hang before the proverb explains what it names, a common suspension device in this style of saying.
Literal: Kò sí ohun there-is-nothing tó yára pa ẹni that quickly kills a-person bí ọ̀rọ̀ àsọjù like excessive-speech.
Idiomatic: "There is nothing that kills faster than talking too much."
Meaning: Excess speech is the fastest route to ruin available.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should govern one's mouth"
Notes: Àsọjù, from sọ (to speak) plus jù (to exceed), names excess speech as a single compact noun, the way English needs a whole phrase to say "talking too much." The proverb's comparative form, "nothing kills faster than," is unusually absolute for the corpus and puts loose talk in the same register as physical violence.
Literal: Pẹ̀tẹ̀pẹ́tẹ̀ mud ọ̀rọ̀ of-speech, a-ta-síni-lára a-thing-that-splashes-onto-one's-body má-wọ̀n-ọ́n that-cannot-be-wiped-off.
Idiomatic: "The soiling caused by speech stains a person and cannot be removed."
Meaning: Words thrown at a person leave a mark that does not wash out.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Injury once spoken cannot be recalled"
Notes: Pẹ̀tẹ̀pẹ́tẹ̀ is specifically mud, wet and splashing dirt rather than dry dust, chosen because mud clings and discolours in a way sand does not. The compound epithet describing the mud, "a-thing-that-splashes-onto-one's-body-and-cannot-be-wiped-off," is built the same way as entry 5's epithet, a favoured construction for describing an action by its irreversible consequence rather than by a verb.
Literal: Ohùn-un kéjiró the-voice of-the-kéjiró-bird ò dé ọ̀run does-not reach heaven.
Idiomatic: "The voice of the kéjiró bird does not rise to reach the sky."
Meaning: Some voices, however insistent, never carry far enough to matter.
Used when: A sentiment that a person's voice carries no weight .
Notes: Kéjiró is a small bird whose call, by the logic of the proverb, is audible nearby but never reaches the height it would need to reach to summon divine attention. The proverb belongs to a family of Yorùbá sayings that measure a speaker's authority by how far their voice is imagined to travel, not by its volume; compare entry 33 below, where an elder's voice is valued regardless of range.
Literal: Ẹnu òpùrọ́ the-mouth of-a-liar kì í ṣẹ̀jẹ does-not bleed.
Idiomatic: "The liar's mouth does not bleed."
Meaning: A lie leaves no visible wound on the mouth that told it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Lies have no telltale labels attached"
Notes: The proverb argues from absence: if lying were physically punishing the way other wrongs are, a liar's mouth would show it, and it does not, so detection has to come from elsewhere. This is a caution against relying on the speaker's demeanour to catch a falsehood, and it implicitly recommends the evidentiary suspicion found in entries 41 and 45 below.
Literal: Ọwọ́ ahọ́n the-reach of-the-tongue kì í tó imú does-not reach the-nose.
Idiomatic: "The reach of the tongue is never as far as the nose."
Meaning: Even the tongue, mobile and probing as it is, cannot reach everywhere on its own body.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is a limit to what a person can accomplish"
Notes: Ọwọ́, ordinarily "hand," is used here for the tongue's own reach or grasp, an extension of the word beyond its usual referent that the literal gloss preserves. Set beside entry 1, which makes the tongue a border marker, this proverb goes further and makes the tongue an example of a limit rather than the definer of one: even the organ of speech has a place it cannot get to.
Literal: Àdá a-machete lẹnu is-the-mouth tálákà of-a-poor-person; igbó bush la ó fi ṣán is-what one uses-it to-clear.
Idiomatic: "The poor person's mouth is a machete; its use is to clear the bush."
Meaning: A poor person's speech is fit only for hard labour, not for matters of consequence.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A poor person's voice carries no weight"
Notes: The machete is a working tool, not a weapon of standing, so casting the poor person's mouth as one is not a compliment to its usefulness but a demotion of its authority: good for cutting undergrowth, no good in a dispute. The proverb sits uneasily beside the corpus's more egalitarian sayings about speech and is included here because the collection should not be smoothed into only its more comfortable claims; see the closing discussion.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ rere good speech ní ńyọ obì lápò is-what brings-out kola-nut from-the-pouch; ọ̀rọ̀ búburú bad speech ní ńyọ ọfà lápó is-what brings-out an-arrow from-the-quiver.
Idiomatic: "Good talk brings the kola nut out of the pouch; provocative talk draws the arrow out of the quiver."
Meaning: The register of speech determines whether the response is hospitality or violence.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Judicious language defuses problems, whereas thoughtless talk aggravates them"
Notes: Kola nut is the standard item of welcome offered to a guest, and an arrow drawn from a quiver is a readied weapon, so the two clauses set the entire range of possible responses to speech, from hospitality to combat, as a direct function of how something is said. The parallel structure, identical down to the grammar, does the proverb's argument for it: same shape, opposite outcome, and only the adjective rere/búburú changes.
Literal: Ẹ̀bìtì ẹnu the-trap of-the-mouth ò tàsé does-not miss.
Idiomatic: "The mouth trap never misses."
Meaning: Words aimed at a target reliably find it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The mouth easily accomplishes even impossible feats"
Notes: Ẹ̀bìtì is a snare or spring-trap, an object built for one purpose and reliable at it, and calling the mouth a trap of this kind makes speech an instrument that is not merely dangerous but efficient, catching what a spear or a hand might miss. Read against entry 111 in 01-iwa-character (a-bìwà-kunkun, the gentle man with hard character), this proverb belongs to the same family of warnings that the least physically imposing instrument can be the most lethal.
Literal: Ẹlẹ́nu the-owner-of-the-mouth là ḿbi is-whom one asks-permission ká tó gbá a before one slaps it.
Idiomatic: "It is from the owner of the mouth that one asks leave before one slaps it."
Meaning: Even punishing a mouth for its speech requires the consent of the person it belongs to.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should not take liberties with a thing without the permission of its owner"
Notes: The proverb is deliberately absurd on its surface, since no one waits for permission to slap the mouth that has offended them, and the absurdity is the joke: it is used ironically, to point out that someone has in fact taken exactly this kind of liberty without asking. Ẹlẹ́nu, "owner of a mouth," built with the productive ní-possessive prefix, treats the mouth as property distinct from the person who has it, a small grammatical move that lets the proverb pretend at a legal formality it is really mocking.
Literal: Bí ojú bá rí if the-eye sees, ẹnu a dákẹ the-mouth remains-quiet.
Idiomatic: "When the eyes see, the mouth remains quiet."
Meaning: Seeing something is not the same as being entitled to announce it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The mouth does not reveal everything the eyes see"
Notes: The proverb assigns the eyes and the mouth different jurisdictions, seeing and telling, and insists the second does not automatically follow from the first. Compare entry 16, its direct converse, and see also entries 45 and 46 in 01-iwa-character's untoned section on the seen-but-unmentionable, which extend this same eye/mouth division to matters too sacred or too shameful to voice.
Literal: Bí ojú kò bá rí if the-eye does-not see, ẹnu kì í sọ nǹkan the-mouth does-not say anything.
Idiomatic: "If the eye does not see, the mouth says nothing."
Meaning: Speech is bounded by what has actually been witnessed.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The mouth can tell only what the eye sees"
Notes: Paired deliberately with entry 15 in Owomoyela's own sequence, the two proverbs together state a complete rule: the mouth's authority to speak is granted by the eye and never exceeds it, whether the eye has seen much or nothing. Together they form one of the tightest logical pairs in this collection, an assertion and its converse stated as separate proverbs rather than combined into one.
Literal: Dídákẹ́ lerín dákẹ́ silence is-what the-elephant is-silent-with; àjànàkú the-elephant ló lẹgàn is-who owns the-forest.
Idiomatic: "The elephant has only chosen to remain silent; to the elephant belongs the forest."
Meaning: The mighty do not need to announce their standing; their silence is a choice, not an absence of claim.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The mighty need not proclaim their importance"
Notes: The reduplicated construction dídákẹ́ lerín dákẹ́, "silence is what the elephant is silent with," insists on the deliberateness of the quiet: this is not an elephant that has nothing to say, it is an elephant that has chosen not to say it, and the second clause supplies the reason by naming its ownership of the whole forest. Owomoyela cross-references entry 4136 as a related saying .
Literal: Bí a bá dákẹ́ if one is-silent, tara ẹni the-body of-one a báni dákẹ stays-silent along-with-one.
Idiomatic: "If one keeps silent, what is in one's body keeps silent as well."
Meaning: Withholding speech withholds whatever trouble is inside from being addressed.
Used when: Owomoyela: "If one does not disclose one's problems, one can expect no help"
Notes: This is the counterweight to the many entries above praising silence as strength: here silence has a cost, because tara ẹni, one's own body or condition, cannot be attended to if it is never voiced. Ara covers both the physical body and one's state or affairs more broadly, so the proverb reads equally as a warning against suffering an illness in silence and against suffering any private difficulty without asking for aid.
Literal: Ibi tí oyín gbé ńhó where bees are humming, tí àdó ńhó where the-charm-calabash hums, ìfun ò dákẹ́ lásán the-intestine does-not stay-silent for-nothing.
Idiomatic: "As the bees hum and the small calabash containing charms hums, the intestine does not keep silent."
Meaning: Amid every other noise and preoccupation around a person, their own body still insists on being heard.
Used when: Owomoyela: "No matter what other people's preoccupations are, one should not ignore one's own problems"
Notes: The àdó is a small calabash used to hold charms and medicine, and its hum here refers to the sound such vessels are held to make when active, placing the proverb inside a world where humming is not only literal but also a sign of potency. Against a background of two other things making noise for their own reasons, the intestine's insistence on rumbling too becomes an argument that internal need cannot be talked over by external distraction, however impressive.
Literal: Àì-sọ̀rọ̀ not-speaking ní ńmú ẹnu rùn is-what makes the-mouth smell.
Idiomatic: "It is abstention from speaking that makes the mouth smell."
Meaning: A mouth kept shut too long grows foul, in the way stagnant things do.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should always say one's piece in a discussion"
Notes: Àì-sọ̀rọ̀ is the negative nominal built on sọ̀rọ̀, to speak, with the àì- prefix, matching the productive pattern for abstract failure-nouns seen elsewhere in this corpus (compare àìmọ̀, not-knowing, in entry 42 of 05-owe-proverbs). This proverb stands in direct and unresolved tension with the entries above praising silence: Yorùbá proverb wisdom does not settle on one position about talking versus staying quiet, and this is one of the clearest examples in the set. See the closing discussion.
Literal: Àdán the-bat sọ orí kodò hangs its-head downward, ó ńwòṣe ẹyẹ gbogbo it watches-the-doings of-all-birds.
Idiomatic: "The bat hangs its head and contemplates the doings of birds."
Meaning: The quiet, inverted observer sees more than the birds occupied with their own noise.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The quiet person sees more than the loudmouth"
Notes: The bat's inverted posture, head down where the other birds' heads are up, is doing real work in the image: its silence is bound up with a literally different vantage point, not simply an absence of sound. This proverb belongs with entry 17's elephant as one of the corpus's animal figures for dignified quiet, though the bat's advantage is explicitly epistemic (it sees more) where the elephant's is a matter of standing (it need not prove anything).
Literal: Bí a bá sọ̀rọ̀ fún olófòófó if one speaks to a-tattler, ajádìí agbọ̀n a-basket-with-a-broken-bottom la sọ ọ́ sí is-what one has-spoken into.
Idiomatic: "Whatever one says to a talebearer one says to a basket that has lost its bottom."
Meaning: Confiding in a gossip is functionally the same as broadcasting the information yourself.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Words whispered to a talebearer are in effect broadcast"
Notes: A basket with no bottom cannot hold anything poured into it, so the image gives a precise mechanism, not just a warning: the talebearer is not merely likely to talk, they are structurally incapable of containing anything. Olófòófó, tattler or gossip, recurs across this set (entries 23 and 30 below) as one of the corpus's recognised social types, alongside the busybody named in entry 40.
Literal: A kì í sọrọ ìkọ̀kọ̀ one does-not speak a-secret-matter lójú olófòófó in-the-presence of-a-tattler.
Idiomatic: "One does not discuss secret matters in the presence of a tattler."
Meaning: Secrets and known gossips do not belong in the same room.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Be careful with your secrets"
Notes: Stated as a flat prohibition rather than as an image, this proverb is the plain instruction that entry 22 supplies the mechanism for: it says what to do, entry 22 explains why. The two circulate as a natural pair and are placed together here for that reason, though Owomoyela does not print them as cross-referenced.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ tí a pé the-matter that one has-tried kí baba má gbọ̀ọ́ that father should-not hear-it, baba ní ńparí ẹ is-what father ends-up settling.
Idiomatic: "A matter that one tries to keep from the ears of the patriarch will eventually come before the patriarch for resolution."
Meaning: Whatever is hidden from the head of the household tends to end up needing him precisely because it was hidden.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The elders have a right to be privy to all important matters, because keeping order and peace is their responsibility"
Notes: Baba, father, here names the household head or patriarch rather than a literal biological father, the same extended use of baba discussed at entry 9 of 05-owe-proverbs for "father of character." The irony structuring the proverb is that concealment itself is what escalates a matter to the level requiring the patriarch's authority to settle, so avoidance produces the very outcome it was meant to avoid.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ àgbà the-word of-an-elder, bí kò bá ta ẹ̀dẹ́ if it does-not strike hunting-success, ogun ní ńta war is-what-it strikes.
Idiomatic: "The word that issues out of the mouth of an elder, if it does not hit at hunting, will hit at war."
Meaning: An elder's speech is never idle; it lands somewhere consequential even if not where expected.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is always considerable substance and weight in what an elder says"
Notes: Ẹ̀dẹ́ names success or good returns from hunting specifically, so the proverb sets two named domains, the hunt and warfare, as the two poles between which an elder's word is guaranteed to fall, rather than claiming vaguely that it "matters." This is a companion to entry 8's kéjiró bird, whose voice by contrast never reaches anywhere at all: together the two proverbs measure speech by where it lands rather than by how loud it is.
Literal: Àsọ̀rọ̀àìlàdí speaking-without-explaining ló pa Elempe ìṣáájú is-what killed the-first Elempe tó ní igbá wúwo ju àwo who said calabash is-heavier than china.
Idiomatic: "Speaking-without-explaining killed the first Elempe who said that calabash was heavier than china."
Meaning: Compressing a statement past the point of clarity can be fatal.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Excessive economy in speech leads to obscurity"
Notes: Elempe is named elsewhere in Yorùbá historical proverb tradition as a fifteenth-century Nupe king, maternal grandfather of Ṣàngó, to whose court Ṣàngó fled after his disgrace, and the "first Elempe" here is likely an allusion within a chain of figures bearing that title rather than an invented character; Owomoyela's collection elsewhere identifies the name this way . The specific claim, that a calabash outweighs a china plate, sounds absurd until it is read as elliptical (weighed full, perhaps, or weighed against durability), and the proverb's whole point is that no one bothered to supply the missing explanation before the misunderstanding proved costly.
Literal: Àwíyé explicit-speech ní ḿmú ọ̀ràn yéni is-what makes a-matter understood; ọ̀ọ́dúnrún okùn three-hundred strings la fi ńsin ẹgbẹ̀ta is-what-one uses to-string six-hundred cowries; bí a ò bá là á if one does-not clarify-it, kì í yéni it-does-not become-understood.
Idiomatic: "Explicitness makes matters clear; it takes strings to string six hundred cowries; unless one explains it, no one understands."
Meaning: Clarity takes real material effort, the way threading a large sum of cowries takes many strings; nothing is understood by itself.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Too much economy in speech leads to confusion"
Notes: Cowries strung in counted units were the practical form of Yorùbá currency before its replacement by coin, so the image of stringing six hundred cowries with three hundred strings is a real unit of labour a listener would have measured against, not an arbitrary metaphor. This proverb and entry 26 form a matched pair, both arguing against compression in speech, and Owomoyela's own placement of them together suggests they were understood as companion sayings .
Literal: Àwíyé explicit-speech nIfẹ̀ ńfọ̀ is-how Ifẹ̀ speaks; gba-n-gba openly lOrò ńpẹran is-how Orò kills-animals.
Idiomatic: "Explicitly is the way Ifẹ̀ speaks; it is openly that Orò kills animals."
Meaning: The proper way to communicate is directly, without concealment, the way the town of Ifẹ̀ is credited with speaking and the way the cult of Orò conducts its business.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Whatever one has to say, one should say without mincing words"
Notes: Ifẹ̀ (Ilé-Ifẹ̀) is credited in Yorùbá thought as the origin town of the Yorùbá people and often stands in proverbs as an authority or exemplar; Orò is a masculine cult associated with concealment from women and outsiders in most contexts, which makes its citation here as an example of openness a deliberate irony, since Orò's rites are elsewhere the paradigm of what must be kept from certain listeners (compare entry 88 in 01-iwa-character's companion collection on the voice of Orò, which women may only hear, never see the source of). The proverb pairs two very different institutions to make the same single point about directness.
Literal: Imú kì í tóbi the-nose does-not grow-big-enough kó gba ọ̀rọ̀ ẹnu sọ to-take the-word from-the-mouth and-speak-it.
Idiomatic: "The nose cannot get so big that it takes the speech out of the mouth."
Meaning: No matter how prominent one organ becomes, it does not usurp another's proper function.
Used when: Owomoyela: "No one, however mighty, may usurp the rights of others"
Notes: The nose is a natural choice for the overreaching organ because it is prominent on the face, close to the mouth, and yet has no speaking function whatever, which makes the image of it "taking" speech vivid rather than plausible. The proverb belongs to a small family across Yorùbá proverb collections that uses facial anatomy to argue for respecting jurisdictions, compare entries 1 and 10 above on the tongue's own bounded reach.
Literal: Bí a kò lówó if one has-no money, à léèyàn one-should have-people; bí a kò léèyàn if one has-no people, à lóhùn rere lẹ́nu one-should have a-good voice in-the-mouth.
Idiomatic: "If one lacks money, one should have people; if one lacks people, one should be pleasant in one's speech."
Meaning: Pleasant speech is a fallback resource when wealth and connections are both absent.
Used when: Owomoyela: "If you lack a social asset, make up for it in other ways"
Notes: The proverb ranks three assets, money, social connection, and manner of speech, as a descending but genuine hierarchy of resources, with a pleasant voice named as the last line of defence rather than as an ornament. Owomoyela cross-references entry 2961 as a related saying on substitute assets . The structure, a chain of "if not X, then Y" clauses ending on speech, gives ordinary pleasant talk unusual standing as a real form of capital.
Literal: Sọ̀rọ̀ kí ọlọ́rọ̀ gbọ́ speaking so-that its-subject hears-it, àbùkù ní ńfi kanni disgrace is-what-it-brings on-one.
Idiomatic: "Spreading rumors into the ears of the subject of the rumor brings disgrace to the speaker."
Meaning: Gossip that circles back to the person it concerns lands its disgrace on the gossiper, not the target.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should refrain from rumormongering"
Notes: Ọlọ́rọ̀ here is used in the specific sense of "the person the matter is about," built on ní (owner-of) plus ọ̀rọ̀ (matter), distinct from the more common use of the same word to mean a wealthy person, which is the sense that applies in entries 33, 35 and 36 below; the two readings are near-homophones and the difference is context, a real hazard for anyone translating this proverb corpus quickly. The proverb assumes gossip's natural tendency to travel back to its subject and treats that tendency as a kind of automatic justice.
Literal: Kí adití baà gbọ́rọ̀ so-that a-deaf-person might hear-something, la ti ńsọ ọ́ is-how-one says-it lójú ọmọ ẹ in-front-of his child.
Idiomatic: "It is so that a deaf person might hear something that one says it in his or her child's presence."
Meaning: When someone cannot be addressed directly, saying a thing to a person close to them is a working substitute.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One way of making one's opinion known to a person one cannot or dares not speak to is to say it in the hearing of someone close to that person"
Notes: The proverb resolves an apparent contradiction, speaking to someone deaf, by relocating the real addressee: the deaf person's child, not the deaf person, is the one meant to hear and relay. It describes a genuine indirect-speech strategy still recognisable in Yorùbá social practice, where a message intended for a person too senior, too estranged, or in this image too literally unable to hear is delivered by being said within earshot of someone connected to them.
Literal: Ẹlẹ́dẹ̀ẹ́ ní the-pig says ọjọ́ tí òún ti jágbọ́n-ọn hùn since-the-day it learned to-answer every-statement with-a-grunt, ọjọ́ náà ni ọ̀rọ̀ ò ti nìun lára mọ that-same day is-when trouble has-not-touched it any-more.
Idiomatic: "The pig says since the day it learned to reply to every statement with a grunt it has not got into any trouble."
Meaning: Answering everything with a noncommittal grunt has kept the pig out of trouble that real words would have caused.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A person who says nothing seldom gets in trouble"
Notes: The pig is given a first-person testimonial voice, a common device in this corpus where an animal reports its own strategy as advice (compare the tortoise's boasts across 01-iwa-character). Owomoyela notes this is a variant of his entry 983 , meaning the proverb circulated in at least two forms he collected independently, which speaks to how well-worn the sentiment was.
Literal: Ẹni tí yó yàáni lówó the-one-who will lend-one money, tí kò níí sinni who will-not pester-one, ohùn ẹnu-u rẹ̀ the-voice of-his-mouth la ti ḿmọ is-how-one comes-to-know-it.
Idiomatic: "The person who will lend money and will not keep pestering one for repayment, one can tell from the tone of his or her voice."
Meaning: A person's spoken tone reveals in advance what kind of creditor they will be.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The way people talk is a good indication of their character"
Notes: Ohùn, voice or tone, is a technical term in a tonal language, and the claim is specifically about how a person sounds rather than what words they choose, a discrimination Yorùbá speakers make finely and English speakers generally do not. This proverb is treated at entry 48 of 01-iwa-character under the heading of character judged by manner of speech; it is included again here because the topic of this file is speech itself, and its inclusion in both files is a deliberate cross-reference rather than an oversight, since the underlying Yorùbá text is identical in both.
Literal: Ká wí fúnni ká gbọ́ let-one be-spoken-to and-listen; ká sọ̀rọ̀ fúnni ká gbà let-one be-advised and-accept; à-wí-ìgbọ́ the-one-spoken-to-and-not-listening, à-gbọ́-ìgbà the-one-advised-and-not-accepting, ní ńfi igbá àdánù bu omi mu is-what uses the-calabash-of-loss to-scoop water and-drink.
Idiomatic: "If one is spoken to, one should listen; if one is advised, one should accept the advice; refusal to listen to speech and refusal to accept advice leads to using the calabash of deprivation as a drinking cup."
Meaning: Refusing to hear or heed what is said to you leaves you drinking from the vessel reserved for loss.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Refusal to heed advice leads to deprivation"
Notes: The two compressed nominals à-wí-ìgbọ́ and à-gbọ́-ìgbà, "the-one-spoken-to-and-not-listening" and "the-one-advised-and-not-accepting," are built by the same à- ... ì- pattern discussed at entry 33 of 01-iwa-character, which turns a whole clause of failure into a single noun. Owomoyela notes this proverb has at least two further variant entries in his collection , evidence of how central the theme of refusing counsel was to the corpus.
Literal: Bí a bá rí ọlọ́rọ̀ ẹni if one sees one's confidant, ṣọ̀rọ̀-ṣọ̀rọ̀ là ńdà pouring-out-words is-what one does.
Idiomatic: "When one sees one's confidant, one runs at the mouth like a spout."
Meaning: In trusted company, speech flows without restraint.
Used when: Owomoyela: "In the right company, one is uninhibited"
Notes: Ọlọ́rọ̀ here takes its "person of wealth" sense rather than the "subject of a matter" sense discussed at entry 31 above, and in this context means something closer to a person one can rely on or confide in, an extension from material wealth to relational security. The verb dà, to pour, cast speech as a liquid released rather than a controlled act, which fits this proverb into the same imagistic family as entry 3's eggs and entry 27's strung cowries: speech in this corpus is repeatedly treated as a physical substance with its own handling properties.
Literal: Àṣàwí ẹjọ́ the-doctored-account of-a-case ẹnìkan-án ṣàre of-one-person turns-out-just.
Idiomatic: "The doctored case of the only side heard in a dispute is always just."
Meaning: A one-sided account of a dispute will always sound fair, precisely because no one has contradicted it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "If one's opponent has no say, one's case is just by default"
Notes: Àṣàwí, "the account that has been dressed up," names the practice of shaping a story in the telling, and the proverb's dry observation is that such shaping is undetectable when only one voice is heard. It is a caution about the structural bias of testimony itself, not about any particular liar, and belongs with entry 27 above as part of the corpus's awareness that clarity and fairness in speech require active work, not trust in whoever happens to be talking.
Literal: A-mọ̀ràn-mòwe one-who-knows-counsel-and-knows-proverbs ní ńlàdí ọ̀rọ̀ is-who resolves a-matter.
Idiomatic: "It is a sage who knows proverbs that resolves disputes."
Meaning: Command of proverb speech is what qualifies a person to settle disagreements.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Proverbs are a means of settling differences"
Notes: The compound epithet a-mọ̀ràn-mòwe, "one-who-knows-counsel-and-knows-proverbs," names two related but distinct competencies, practical wisdom and command of the proverb repertoire, as jointly necessary for the role of adjudicator. This proverb is the corpus's own account of why a file like this one exists: it is a direct statement of the claim made in 05-owe-proverbs's discussion of òwe in adjudication, that proverbial fluency is not decoration but the qualification for settling a case.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ tí ọlọgbọ́n bá sọ whatever-a-wise-person says, ẹnu aṣiwèrè la ti ńgbọ́ ọ is-heard-again from-the-mouth of-a-fool.
Idiomatic: "Whatever a wise man says will be heard repeated by the nitwit."
Meaning: A fool cannot resist repeating a wise person's words, though not necessarily faithfully.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Rumormongers always distort the news they hear from reliable sources"
Notes: The proverb assumes an involuntary chain: wisdom generates speech, and speech, once loosed into the world, will pass through unreliable mouths whether or not the wise speaker intends it. It sits close in spirit to entry 22's basket with no bottom, though the mechanism differs: there information leaks because the recipient cannot keep it, here it degrades because the recipient cannot transmit it accurately.
Literal: Gbogbo ọ̀rọ̀ every matter ní ńṣojú èké is-what-shows-in-the-face-of a-busybody.
Idiomatic: "The busybody is privy to all matters."
Meaning: The busybody has made it their business to know everything that happens.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is nothing the busybody will admit he or she does not know about"
Notes: Èké usually denotes a devious or deceitful person elsewhere in Owomoyela's collection (see entries 9 and 46 above and 41 below), but here Owomoyela's own gloss reads it specifically as "busybody," a related but distinct social type, someone whose fault is nosiness rather than dishonesty as such, though the two vices are clearly imagined as neighbours. The idiom ṣojú, literally "to show in the face of," treats knowledge of every matter as something that visibly marks the busybody's expression, a small but telling detail: the proverb claims you can see this person's nosiness on them.
Literal: Ẹnu the-mouth ni Ifá wà is-where Ifá resides.
Idiomatic: "The Ifá oracle is in the mouth."
Meaning: No oracle carries more authority than the spoken word itself.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is no oracle as powerful as the word the mouth pronounces"
Notes: Ifá is the Yorùbá divination system and its presiding òrìṣà, consulted through a formal apparatus of chain, tray and verse, so locating Ifá's power in the ordinary human mouth rather than in that apparatus is a striking claim, effectively arguing that everyday speech carries a comparable weight to divination. This is the strongest statement in the set of the idea, present throughout, that speech is not merely descriptive but efficacious: saying a thing does something in the world, the same premise that underlies proverbs of blessing and curse across Yorùbá oral genres.
Literal: Ìsọ̀rọ̀ the-manner-of-speaking nìgbèsì is-the-response-it-gets.
Idiomatic: "How one speaks is how one receives a response."
Meaning: The manner of an approach determines the manner of the reply it draws.
Used when: Owomoyela: "People respond in kind to the way one addresses or behaves toward them"
Notes: Four syllables of subject and four of predicate, and no verb beyond the copula ni: this is one of the most compressed proverbs in the set, close in economy to Ìwà lẹ̀sìn ("character is worship") in 01-iwa-character. Ìgbèsì is a response or reaction more broadly than only a verbal one, so the proverb's claim extends past conversation to comportment generally, though its placement among speech proverbs and its root in sọ̀rọ̀ keep the primary sense verbal.
Literal: Gba-n-gba-á dẹkùn a-leopard is-caught in-the-open, kedereé bẹ̀ ẹ́ wò clear-sight looks-it-over well; ọ̀rọ̀ ìkọ̀kọ̀ ò sí níbẹ there-is-no secret-matter there.
Idiomatic: "A leopard is trapped in open space; clear sight gets a good look at it; the matter does not admit of secrets."
Meaning: Once something is caught in plain view, there is no concealing it any longer.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Once a secret is leaked, it can no longer be hidden"
Notes: The leopard, one of the most dangerous animals in the Yorùbá proverb bestiary, makes the exposure especially vivid: even something as formidable and normally concealed as a leopard cannot hide once caught in the open. The ideophone-like repetition gba-n-gba, meaning openly or in plain sight, recurs at entry 28 above describing how the Orò cult kills its animals, giving the two proverbs a shared vocabulary of exposure though opposite attitudes toward it.
Literal: Ọ̀rọ̀ the-matter ò pariwo does-not make-noise.
Idiomatic: "The matter in question does not make a noise."
Meaning: The problem under discussion is not, in itself, a loud or urgent one.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The matter under discussion poses little problem"
Notes: Pariwo, to make a commotion or uproar, is used elsewhere in the corpus of genuinely alarming events; applying its negation to a matter is a way of downgrading it by comparison with things that really would be noisy. The proverb's brevity, three words, performs its own claim: even the sentence declaring the matter unremarkable declines to make any noise about it.
Literal: Ojú the-eyes lọ̀rọ̀-ọ́ wà is-where discourse resides.
Idiomatic: "Discourse is in the eyes."
Meaning: Real conversation happens face to face, eye to eye, not at a remove.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Look the person with whom one is holding a dialogue in the eyes"
Notes: This proverb locates ọ̀rọ̀, speech or discourse, in the eyes rather than in the mouth, a departure from every other entry in this file and worth noting as such: where entries 15 and 16 above kept the eye's evidence and the mouth's speech in strictly separate jurisdictions, this proverb collapses them, insisting that honest discourse requires the eyes to be present as witness to what the mouth says. Confidence on how far this collapsing should be read as doctrine rather than as etiquette advice about eye contact: medium.
Literal: Ẹnu asoṣọkọ́ the-mouth of-the-one-whose-garment-is-a-loincloth kì í tó ọ̀rọ̀ does-not reach the-level-of-discussion.
Idiomatic: "The mouth of the person whose garment is a loincloth is never welcome in a discussion."
Meaning: A person of the lowest visible social standing is not granted a hearing in matters of consequence.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A shiftless person has no privileges in the community"
Notes: Asoṣọkọ́, "one whose only garment is a loincloth," is a description of poverty through clothing, the same rhetorical move as entry 11 above, which measures the poor person's speech by the tool it is fit for rather than the substance it might carry. As with entry 11, this proverb is included because a scholarly collection should not omit the corpus's harder, less flattering material; see the closing discussion on this tension.
Literal: Tútù coolness ní ńtẹnu ẹja wá is-what comes-from-the-mouth of-a-fish.
Idiomatic: "Only coolness comes out of the fish's mouth."
Meaning: Let only calm, soothing things come from your mouth.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Permit your mouth to say only soothing things"
Notes: Tútù, coolness, is the standard Yorùbá figure for a temperament that is calm and unprovoking, opposed to gbóná, heat, used of anger and provocation; the fish, which lives in water and by association is permanently cool, is chosen as the vehicle for this because its coolness is constant rather than achieved. This closes the set on the same aspiration entry 12 opened it with, that good speech ("kola nut from the pouch") and bad speech ("arrow from the quiver") are choices, and here the choice is narrowed to a single recommended register: coolness, always.
Literal: Ẹnu èèyàn people's mouths lẹbọ are-the-sacrifice-that-must-be-made.
Idiomatic: "People's mouths are the things to offer sacrifices to."
Meaning: What people say about a person is the thing most worth propitiating, more than any spiritual danger.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One need fear nothing as much as what people say"
Notes: Ẹbọ is sacrifice in the technical Ifá and òrìṣà sense, offerings made to appease spiritual forces or avert misfortune identified through divination, so redirecting that vocabulary onto ordinary human mouths is a deliberately provocative claim: gossip and public opinion are cast as more dangerous, and more in need of ritual management, than the spiritual dangers sacrifice is normally made against. It is a fitting close to this collection, since it states outright the premise that the whole file has been assembled around, that the mouth is the most consequential force a Yorùbá proverb-user has to reckon with.
Three things stand out across these forty-eight proverbs that are easy to miss reading them one at a time.
The mouth is treated as a physically dangerous organ, not a channel. It kills faster than any weapon (entry 6), leaves wounds that never close (entry 5), traps its target without fail (entry 13), and deserves ritual sacrifice more than any spirit does (entry 48). This is a consistent register across the set: speech is not information transfer that can go wrong, it is an appetite and an instrument that is dangerous by its nature, the way fire and blades are dangerous by their nature. The recurring imagery of speech as a physical substance, an egg (entry 3), mud (entry 7), poured liquid (entry 36), cowrie strings (entry 27), reinforces the same point from a different angle: words in this corpus behave like matter, with weight, fragility and stain, not like abstractions.
The corpus does not resolve the question of whether to talk or stay quiet, and that lack of resolution is real. Entries 15 through 21 build a strong case for silence, culminating in the elephant who owns the forest precisely because it does not need to announce itself. Entry 20 then states flatly that abstaining from speech makes the mouth stink and that one should always say one's piece. Both are attested, both are genuinely used, and assembling them into one consistent doctrine about Yorùbá attitudes toward silence would misrepresent the material. A proverb is selected for an occasion; a person praising a taciturn elder reaches for entry 17, a person urging a sulking relative to speak up reaches for entry 20, and nothing in the corpus adjudicates between them in the abstract.
Speech proverbs about the poor are notably harsher than the corpus's proverbs about character in general. Entries 11 and 46 measure a poor person's voice by what it is fit for, a machete for clearing bush, and deny it a hearing "in discussion" outright, framed by nothing softer than the person's visible poverty. This sits uncomfortably beside proverbs elsewhere in this same tradition that locate worth in character rather than in wealth (see 01-iwa-character, entries 1 through 15). Both strands are genuinely part of the recorded corpus, and a file that kept only the more admirable material would not be describing the tradition accurately.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
The machinery Yorùbá uses to make new words, and a worked, confidence-flagged examination of the etymologies of the key religious and philosophical terms.
A short pointer file explaining why this corpus's full treatment of proverbs-about-proverbs lives at file 32, with one cross-reference and an honest record of an empty search for material distinct from that file.
Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on the ọmọlúàbí ideal, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about telling the truth, the mechanics of lying and self-deception, and the value placed on a person whose word is reliable.
Forty-three Yorùbá proverbs on sùúrù, patience, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.