Thirteen sourced Yorùbá proverbs on shame, disgrace and reputation, presented with the original, a literal gloss, and a named translation, honestly reflecting how thin this theme is in the digitised record available to this corpus.
Ìtìjú is shame, and its commonest idiom, ojú tì, is literally "the eye is pushed" or "the eye is closed against," the sensation of a face that cannot be held up under others' regard. This file collects thirteen Yorùbá proverbs in which shame, disgrace, or the fact of being seen and judged by other people is the actual subject. They treat shame less as a feeling to be managed than as a social event with a schedule and a cost: it is incurred in a single day but felt every day after, it can be avoided by never getting into the position that invites it, and it attaches specifically to whoever has forgotten the boundary that should have kept it away.
This is the thinnest file in this batch of the corpus, and that thinness is a finding worth stating plainly rather than a shortfall to apologise past. Owomoyela's digitised Yorùbá Proverb Treasury , the primary source mined across sibling files 01, 03, 04, 05 and others in this section, does not carry a dedicated section on shame or reputation the way it does on truthfulness, humility, or patience. The vocabulary of shame in Yorùbá, ìtìjú, ojú tì, tijú, dójútì, appears scattered through Owomoyela's sections on humility, self-restraint, daring, and character, usually as the penalty clause at the end of a proverb whose main subject is something else: overreach, laziness, indebtedness, forgetting one's place. A systematic pass through two of Owomoyela's digitised parts, on humility and self-knowledge and on fortitude and daring, found thirteen entries where shame or disgrace, not some other fault, is what the proverb is actually about and where the entry does not duplicate material already given in owe-iwa-character, owe-truthfulness-lying-integrity, or owe-pride-humility-self-knowledge.
Whether that scarcity reflects something real about how Yorùbá proverb-makers treated shame, as a consequence attached to other faults rather than a freestanding topic worth its own proverbs, or whether it reflects a gap in what Owomoyela's fieldwork happened to record and what has since been digitised, cannot be settled from this evidence alone. Both are live possibilities and this file does not choose between them. A search for supplementary academic sources specifically discussing Yorùbá shame or reputation proverbs with quoted texts and translations turned up several peer-reviewed candidates, including a 2012 Journal of African Cultural Studies article analysing Yorùbá proverbs about leprosy and social exclusion, and a 2017 Africology article on omoluabi virtue, but every one of them sat behind a paywall or an access wall (403 responses from academia.edu and ResearchGate, subscription-gated at the publisher) that could not be cleared within this session. Rather than quote proverbs at second hand from a search engine's summary of a paper this corpus could not actually read, those sources are named here as leads for a future pass and nothing is drawn from them. The count below is honestly short of the other files in this section, and it is short for a documented reason rather than by accident.
The proverbs below are drawn from Owomoyela's digitised The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yorùbá Proverb Treasury, hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries Electronic Text Center: Part 1, "On humility, self-control, self-knowledge, self-respect, and self-restraint," and Part 4, on fortitude, daring, and related conduct . Both parts print each proverb in standard orthography with full tone marking, followed by Owomoyela's own English translation and a parenthetical usage note. The Yorùbá text and the quoted idiomatic English below are Owomoyela's, reproduced as printed. The literal glosses are the compiler's own, built from the Yorùbá, except where Owomoyela's usage note is quoted directly as the Used when line. None of the thirteen entries below duplicate proverbs already given in owe-iwa-character (including its entries 39 and 40, on suspicion and on shame as self-protection) or in the pride and humility cluster of owe-pride-humility-self-knowledge (including its ojú kì í pọ́n / tẹ́ series, entries 45 and 48 to 55, which are disgrace-adjacent but filed there because their organising idea is the limit of dignity under hardship rather than shame itself).
Literal: Àgbà an-elder tó mọ ìtìjú who knows shame kì í folè ṣeré does-not play at-theft.
Idiomatic: "An elder who is wary of disgrace will not play at stealing."
Meaning: Knowing what shame is, and being unwilling to risk it, keeps a person of standing away from conduct that would invite it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Anything that smacks of stealing will disgrace an elder"
Notes: Mọ ìtìjú, to know shame, treats shame as a piece of knowledge one can possess or lack, consistent with how this whole set of proverbs handles it as a fact about a person's judgement rather than only a feeling. "Play at stealing" covers anything that resembles theft closely enough to be mistaken for it, not only theft itself; an elder is held to the higher standard of avoiding the appearance.
Literal: Àgbà tí kò nítìjú an-elder who has-not shame, ojú kan ni ìbá ní one eye is-what-he-would-have; ojú kan náà that-same one eye a wà lọ́gangan iwájú-u rẹ̀ would-sit directly on-his-forehead.
Idiomatic: "An elder without self-respect might as well have only one eye, that one eye being in the center of his forehead."
Meaning: A person incapable of shame is, functionally, disfigured: the faculty that ordinary people have and that keeps them presentable is simply absent from him.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Shamelessness does not become an elder"
Notes: Owomoyela's collection carries a close variant of this proverb applied to any person rather than specifically an elder, Èèyàn tí ò nítìjú ojú kan ni ìbá ní; a gbórín a tó tẹṣin, "a shameless person deserves to have only one eye, that one as large as a horse's," glossed "human endowments are wasted on graceless people" The two versions differ in whose disfigurement is imagined, a single centred eye against a single oversized one, but both convert an inner incapacity for shame into an outer, visible deformity, which is a striking move: the proverb does not merely disapprove of shamelessness, it insists that the shameless person ought to look the part.
Literal: Àgbàlagbà akàn an-elderly crab tó kó sí garawa yègèdè that gets-carried into a-bucket, ojú tì í the-eye pushes it (it-is-disgraced).
Idiomatic: "The elderly crab that enters into a bucket; it is thoroughly disgraced."
Meaning: A creature of some age and standing, caught and contained the way only the young or careless should be, suffers a disgrace proportionate to how far beneath its dignity the capture is.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should avoid potentially disgraceful actions"
Notes: Ojú tì, the idiom that gives this file its Yorùbá vocabulary, is used here in its full verbal form rather than as the noun ìtìjú: the eye is what is described as being pushed or shut, which is the physical picture underlying the abstract noun used in entries 1 and 2. An elderly crab, specifically, ought to know the trick that keeps a younger one out of a bucket; the proverb's disgrace is compounded by the age of the crab, not simply by the capture.
Literal: Ìjàkùmọ̀ the-wild-cat kì í rin ọ̀sán does-not walk-about in-daytime, ẹni a bí ire one who was-born to-good-fortune kì í rin òru does-not walk-about at-night.
Idiomatic: "The wild cat never roams in daylight; a well-bred person does not wander around in the night time."
Meaning: A person with a reputation worth keeping avoids the hours and situations in which reputations are lost, the way a nocturnal predator avoids the hours in which it would be seen and hunted.
Used when: Owomoyela: "People who care about their reputation should stay away from questionable actions"
Notes: The parallel is exact and inverted: the wild cat's caution is about predation, staying unseen to survive, while the well-bred person's caution is about reputation, staying unseen to avoid the suspicion that comes with being caught abroad at an hour with no good explanation. Both halves of the proverb are stated as simple fact rather than instruction, and the hearer supplies the imperative.
Literal: Ọjọ́ kan là ḿbàjẹ́ on-one day is-how-one is-disgraced, ọjọ́ gbogbo every day lara ńtini is-how the-body aches-one.
Idiomatic: "Only one day brings disgrace to a person; the shame is felt every day."
Meaning: Disgrace is incurred in a single event but its cost is not paid off on that day; it recurs.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The thoughtless act of a moment mars one's reputation for a long time"
Notes: Owomoyela cross-references this directly to entry 6 below as a companion text, and the two are worth reading together rather than as duplicates: this one names the mechanism as bodily ache, ara ńti ni, which locates the recurring cost in physical sensation rather than only in social standing.
Literal: Ọjọ́ kan ṣoṣo là ńtẹ́ on-one single day is-how-one is-disgraced; ojoojúmọ́ every-single-day lojú ńtini is-how the-eye aches-one.
Idiomatic: "It takes one day only for one to disgrace oneself; the shame is a daily affair."
Meaning: The same claim as entry 5, restated with ojú, the eye, as the organ that carries the recurring cost rather than the body generally.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Fleeting indiscretion have lasting effects"
Notes: Where entry 5 uses bàjẹ́, to be spoiled or ruined, this uses tẹ́, the verb of disgrace proper that also appears in owe-pride-humility-self-knowledge's ojú kì í pọ́n cluster. Owomoyela records both as a matched pair, one to the other, which suggests the single-day-versus-every-day structure was a productive template rather than a single fixed text; the choice of organ, body or eye, is the only substantive variation between them.
Literal: Ìbàjẹ́ ọjọ́ kan the-disgrace of-one day ò tán bọ̀rọ̀ does-not finish easily.
Idiomatic: "The disgrace one incurs in one day does not disappear that soon."
Meaning: Disgrace outlasts the event that produced it, by a wide margin.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Reputations are easy to destroy but most difficult to repair"
Notes: The shortest and plainest statement of the timing claim that entries 5 and 6 elaborate with an organ and a rhythm of recurrence; this version drops the imagery and states the asymmetry, quick to earn and slow to shed, as a flat fact. Three separate texts making the identical point about timing, drawn from two different parts of Owomoyela's collection, is itself evidence that the asymmetry between how fast disgrace arrives and how slowly it leaves was a point Yorùbá proverb-speakers returned to often.
Literal: Bí ojú kò bá ti olè if the-eye does-not push the-thief (if the-thief feels-no-shame), a ti ará ilé ẹ̀ it pushes the-people of-his-house.
Idiomatic: "If the thief feels no shame, members of his household should."
Meaning: Shame that fails in the wrongdoer does not simply disappear; it transfers to the household that produced him.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A person's disgrace must concern his relatives"
Notes: This is the clearest statement in the set of shame as a resource distributed across a household rather than sealed inside an individual, consistent with the Yorùbá location of moral formation in the compound documented at length in owe-iwa-character's entries on household responsibility (compare especially entry 19 there, on the household as the organ that perceives what a person cannot see in themselves). The proverb assumes shame must land somewhere and simply redirects it when the primary target is missing.
Literal: Èèyàn ìbáà kúrú a-person even-if-short, ìbáà búrẹ́wà even-if-ugly, gbèsè ò sí debt is-not-there, ìtìjú ò sí shame is-not-there.
Idiomatic: "Whether a person be short or ugly, if there is no debt, there can be no disgrace."
Meaning: Physical shortcomings carry no shame; unpaid debt does, and its absence is what actually protects a person's standing.
Used when: Owomoyela: "As long as one is debt-free other details of one's personal circumstances are of little consequence"
Notes: The proverb performs a sorting operation, listing two things that might be expected to shame a person, being short, being unattractive, and dismissing both as irrelevant before naming the one thing, debt, that actually determines whether shame applies. This distinguishes Yorùbá ìtìjú sharply from embarrassment about appearance: the proverb explicitly rules appearance out of the category.
Literal: Ẹ̀tẹ́ disgrace bá ọ̀lẹ meets-up-with the-lazy-person.
Idiomatic: "Disgrace comes upon the shiftless."
Meaning: Laziness and disgrace are paired outcomes; one is the predictable arrival of the other.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Disgrace attends shiftlessness"
Notes: Three words in Yorùbá, and the compression states the pairing as if it were a law rather than a warning: disgrace is not a risk the lazy person runs, it is a companion already on its way. Ẹ̀tẹ́ is the same noun of disgrace used in owe-pride-humility-self-knowledge's entry on the tortoise, lizard, and yam that each forget themselves (that file's entry 53); here it is attached to a type of person, shiftlessness, rather than to a specific narrated failure.
Literal: A kì í ṣe ọ̀jẹ̀ one does-not perform the-ọ̀jẹ̀-masquerade ṣe ojú tì mí and-do the-eye-pushed-me (act-bashful); konko lojú alágbe flint is-the-eye of-a-beggar.
Idiomatic: "One does not carry the ọ̀jẹ̀ masquerade and yet affect bashfulness; the mendicant's eyes must always be like flint."
Meaning: Certain roles require setting shame aside as a condition of doing them at all; a person who has taken on such a role and still shows shame has misjudged what the role demands.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One must assume the attitude one's trade demands"
Notes: Ọ̀jẹ̀ is a masquerade performance, a public and demanding role, set beside the beggar's trade as a second example of an occupation that structurally cannot coexist with visible bashfulness. This is the one entry in the set that treats the capacity for shame as something a person can and sometimes must switch off for a role, which sits against entry 40 of owe-iwa-character (Ẹni tó tijú tì í fún ara-a rẹ̀, the capacity for shame as a self-protective faculty): that proverb praises the faculty as a general good, this one names specific occupations in which deploying it would be a professional failure. The two are not in contradiction so much as addressed to different situations, which is consistent with how this whole corpus selects proverbs by occasion.
Literal: Kó wó, kó wó let-it fall, let-it fall, àràbà ò wó the-silk-cotton-tree does-not fall; ojú tìrókò the-eye pushes the-ìrókò-tree (the-ìrókò is-disgraced).
Idiomatic: "'May it crash! May it crash!' The silk-cotton tree does not crash; the ìrókò tree is shamed."
Meaning: When those hoping for someone's downfall are proved wrong, the shame of the failed prediction lands on the watchers, or on whoever was aligned with the wish, not on the person who did not fall. The proverb sets two of the largest trees in the Yorùbá forest against each other: onlookers wishing failure on the silk-cotton tree are disappointed when it stands, and the disgrace of that failed prediction attaches instead to the ìrókò, standing nearby and by implication associated with the wish.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The person whose enemies have been wishing and expecting to fail has not failed; the enemies are shamed"
Notes: This is the only entry in the file where shame is explicitly the outcome for the wrong party in a dispute rather than for a wrongdoer, and it makes disgrace a consequence of public prediction rather than of conduct: the ìrókò did nothing except stand near a tree that was being wished ill, and that proximity is enough to transfer the disgrace of the failed wish onto it. The ìrókò (Milicia excelsa) also appears as the object of ritual respect in owe-iwa-character's untoned-source entry 58, where insulting it invites a delayed reckoning; here it is cast in the opposite role, as the party disgraced by others' failed hostility rather than the source of retribution.
Literal: Oníṣú the-owner-of-yams fiṣu ẹ se ẹ̀bẹ uses his-yams to-make yam-pottage; ojú ti atèèpojẹ the-eye pushes the-eater-of-peel-scrapings (the-scraping-eater is-disgraced).
Idiomatic: "The owner of the yams makes yam pottage out of the yams; the person who eats the yam scrapings off the peels is shamed."
Meaning: A person who has been living off the margins of another's provision, and is not owed anything from the actual store, is disgraced the moment the owner disposes of that store properly and the margin disappears.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The parasite is shamed when the host finds a way to shut him out"
Notes: Atèèpojẹ, the eater of peel-scrapings, is a compressed agent noun naming a specific parasitic position: someone who has attached themselves to another person's food supply at its least valuable edge, with no legitimate claim on the main store. The disgrace here is not moral in the sense of wrongdoing exposed; it is structural, the visible loss of a position that was never secure to begin with once the person it depended on acts in their own interest.
Two things stand out across these thirteen proverbs, and a third is the fact of their number itself.
Shame in this material is a social event with a timetable, not a private feeling. Entries 5, 6 and 7, three separate texts making the same point from two different parts of Owomoyela's collection, all insist on the same asymmetry: disgrace is incurred quickly, in a single day, and its cost is paid out slowly, felt every day after. None of the thirteen proverbs here describe shame as an internal state examined for its own sake; every one of them is interested in shame's timing, its transfer between people (entry 8, the household inheriting what the shameless thief will not feel; entry 12, the onlookers who inherit the disgrace of their own failed prediction), or its conditional switching on and off by role (entry 11, the masquerader and the beggar for whom visible bashfulness is a professional liability rather than a virtue). Shame is handled as a fact about a person's position relative to other people watching, not as an emotion described from the inside.
The record itself is the finding. Thirteen proverbs is a small file for a theme this central to Yorùbá social life, and set against the fifty-eight, thirty-nine, and fifty-five proverbs assembled for character, truthfulness, and pride and humility in the sibling files of this same batch, the gap is not close. The likeliest explanation, on the evidence available, is that Yorùbá proverb-makers folded shame into other topics rather than treating it as a freestanding one: nearly every entry collected here was found attached to a proverb primarily about an elder's dignity, a lazy person's fate, or a thief's household, with shame named as the consequence rather than the subject. Whether a genre-wide search beyond Owomoyela's excerpted portions, or better access to the peer-reviewed scholarship named above, would recover a larger dedicated set is a real, open question that this file cannot answer, and it is reported here as a limit on the file rather than smoothed into a false completeness.
Leads checked but not usable: Ebenso, Bassey, Gbenga Adeyemi, Adegboyega O. Adegoke, and Nick Emmel, "Using Indigenous Proverbs to Understand Social Knowledge and Attitudes to Leprosy among the Yorùbá of Southwest Nigeria," Journal of African Cultural Studies 24, no. 2 (2012): 208-222, analyses twenty-three proverbs concerning social exclusion and stigma but sits behind a Taylor & Francis paywall, with its academia.edu and ResearchGate mirrors returning access-denied responses in this session. Olanipekun, O. V., "Omoluabi: Re-Thinking the Concept of Virtue in Yoruba Culture and Moral System," Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 10, no. 9 (2017): 217-231, discusses omoluabi virtue and was reachable in principle at an open PDF host but could not be retrieved in this session. Oyeleye, Olayinka, "Ìwà l'ẹwà: Towards a Yorùbá Feminist Ethics" (Center for African Studies, University of Florida, 2018), was reachable and discusses the term ìtìjú in narrative context, but supplies no proverb quoted with a translation that meets this corpus's three-layer standard, so nothing is drawn from it. Neither this file nor its count relies on any of these three.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, 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.
Fifty-five Yorùbá proverbs on pride, arrogance, humility, and the limits of what a person can know about themselves, each given with the original, a literal gloss, and a named translation.
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.
Forty-three Yorùbá proverbs on sùúrù, patience, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Twenty-one Yorùbá proverbs on doing and receiving favors, the risk that kindness goes unrewarded or turns to harm, and the moral weight of ingratitude, drawn from a thinner sourced record than most themes in this corpus.