Proverbs with Disputed Meanings

Most proverbs in Owomoyela's collection carry a single usage note stated with confidence. A smaller number carry a note in which Owomoyela himself hedges, offers two or three competing readings, or states plainly that a word or an allusion is obscure to him. This file collects six such cases and reproduces every reading the source offers rather than picking the more plausible one, because resolving the ambiguity silently would misrepresent how uncertain the source itself is. This is a genre where the reader should expect real, documented disagreement, not a curated illusion of consensus.

The proverbs

1. Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá: bí a ò bá là á, kì í yéni.

Literal: Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá [an-ambiguous-number-word]: bí a ò bá là á if-one does-not explain-it, kì í yéni it-does-not become-clear-to-one.

Idiomatic: "Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá: if one does not explain it, no one understands what it means." 1

Meaning: Ambiguous statements result in confusion unless clarified.

Used when: As a general caution against leaving important statements unclarified.

Notes: Owomoyela's footnote states the ambiguity directly, and it is arithmetic rather than merely verbal: "The word ẹgbẹ̀tàlá could be a contraction of either igba mẹ́tàlá (2,600) or ẹgbàá mẹ́tàlá (26,000)" [S1, note 14], a tenfold difference depending on which base numeral the contraction compresses. This proverb is the collection's cleanest case of a saying that dramatises its own point: it warns against unclarified ambiguity using a number word that is itself unclarified and ambiguous, and Owomoyela's footnote leaves the reader in exactly the position the proverb describes.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 2495, with note 14.

2. Kì í tètè yéni: òwe ńlá ni. (compare the treatment of ambiguity at entry 1 above)

(This proverb belongs properly to owe-proverbs-about-proverbs-metalanguage, where it is fully catalogued; it is referenced here only to note that its own self-grading, calling itself "a great proverb," is itself a claim Owomoyela reports without independent confirmation that Yorùbá speakers uniformly rank it so. Not counted in this file's total.)

3. Ó di kan-nu-rin kan-nu-rin, agogo Ògúntólú.

Literal: Ó di kan-nu-rin kan-nu-rin it-becomes noise-without-pattern, agogo Ògúntólú Ògúntólú's bell.

Idiomatic: "All one hears is noise without pattern, like that of Ògúntólú's bell." 1

Meaning: The statements being made are senseless.

Used when: Said of confused, disorganised, or meaningless speech.

Notes: Owomoyela's footnote reads in full: "The reference to Ògúntólú, a proper name, is obscure" [S1, note 86]. This proverb's entire image, a specific person's bell making patternless noise, depends on a reference Owomoyela cannot explain; the ideophone kan-nu-rin kan-nu-rin carries the sense of disorder well enough on its own, but who Ògúntólú was, or why his bell specifically, is not recoverable from the source.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 1069, with note 86.

4. Òjòjò lẹ̀ ò tán bẹ̀rẹ̀; ọlẹ̀ bà á tì ó dáná orí.

Literal: Òjòjò lẹ̀ ò tán bẹ̀rẹ̀ a-lazy-person's illness is-not-soon over; ọlẹ̀ bà á tì the-lazy-person finds-no-way-out ó dáná orí he makes-fire [for-his-head / uncertain].

Idiomatic: "A lazy person's illness is not soon over; the lazy person finds no way out and prepares a fire to warm his head." 1

Meaning: A lazy person uses every excuse to avoid an obligation, and when he finally cannot avoid it, his manner of fulfilling it is pitiable.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A lazy person will use every excuse to avoid any obligation, and when he cannot avoid it, his fulfillment of it is always pitiable" 1

Notes: This is the richest disputed case in the collection. Owomoyela's footnote offers three competing, mutually exclusive readings of the phrase dáná orí and calls the whole point "obscure": (1) dáná orí as "light a fire to warm his head", the reading behind the translation printed above, whose actual point Owomoyela admits is unclear; (2) dáná orí, read instead as dáná ọ̀rí, "offer a feast of corn meal", which he suggests would be a laughably poor gesture since ọ̀rí (a corn-meal dish) "is not a particularly popular meal"; and (3) dáná òrí, read as "make fire using shea butter as fuel, or make fire for shea butter," which he also calls "equally problematic" [S1, note 50]. Three tonally and semantically distinct words, orí (head), ọ̀rí (a corn dish), and òrí (shea butter), are all graphically identical once tone marks are stripped or misheard, and Owomoyela's own footnote is a direct, first-hand demonstration of how tonal ambiguity can defeat even an expert compiler working from his own fieldwork. This is the single clearest documented case in the collection of tone bearing the entire semantic weight of a disputed reading, and it belongs equally to the tonal-wordplay theme of file 93; it is catalogued here because Owomoyela's own hedging, not merely the tonal mechanism, is the reason it counts as disputed.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 2254, with note 50.

5. Gbogbo ẹranko ìgbó pé, wọ́n ní àwọn ó fi ìkokò ṣe aṣíwájú; nígbà tó gbọ́ inú-ù rẹ̀ dùn; ṣùgbọ́n nígbà tó ṣe, ó bú sẹ́kún; wọ́n ní kí ló dé? Ó ní bóyá wọ́n lè tún ro ọ̀ràn náà wò kí wọ́n ní kì í ṣe bẹ́ẹ̀ mọ́.

Literal: Gbogbo ẹranko ìgbó pé all the-animals of-the-forest assembled, wọ́n ní àwọn ó fi ìkokò ṣe aṣíwájú they-said they-would make hyena their-leader/secretary; nígbà tó gbọ́ inú-ù rẹ̀ dùn when-he heard-it he-was-glad; ṣùgbọ́n nígbà tó ṣe but afterward, ó bú sẹ́kún he burst-into-tears; wọ́n ní kí ló dé? they-asked what-was-wrong? Ó ní bóyá wọ́n lè tún ro ọ̀ràn náà wò kí wọ́n ní kì í ṣe bẹ́ẹ̀ mọ́ he-said perhaps they-might reconsider and reverse-themselves.

Idiomatic: "All the animals in the forest assembled and decided to make Hyena their secretary; he was happy to hear the news, but a short while later he burst into tears; asked what the matter was, he replied that perhaps they might revisit the matter and reverse themselves." 1

Meaning: Uncertain; Owomoyela offers two possible morals rather than one.

Used when: Owomoyela states the ambiguity directly: "The import, depending on the user's intention, could be either that even in times of good fortune one should be mindful of the possibility of reversal, or that one should not so focus on the negative as to be incapable of enjoyment" 1

Notes: Owomoyela introduces this proverb in his introduction specifically as an example of a Yorùbá òwe that breaks the usual expectation of brevity, "there is nothing pithy about the following" 1, and its length is matched by the openness of its moral: two readings that pull in nearly opposite directions, caution against complacency versus caution against excessive anxiety, both survive equally well on the text as given. This is a case where the ambiguity is not a gap in Owomoyela's knowledge, as in entries 3 and 4, but a genuine openness built into the proverb's narrative structure itself, since a fable-length proverb like this one supports more than one moral the way a longer story usually can.

Source: 1, Introduction, p. 4.

6. Kàràkàrà ń ké, ẹnu rẹ̀ ḿbẹjẹ; ó ní bí ẹnu òun bá ya dé ìpàkọ́, òun ó sáà máa wí tòun.

Literal: Kàràkàrà ń ké kàràkàrà is-crying-out, ẹnu rẹ̀ ḿbẹjẹ its-mouth is-bleeding; ó ní bí ẹnu òun bá ya dé ìpàkọ́ it-says even-if its-mouth tears to-the-occiput, òun ó sáà máa wí tòun it-will keep saying its-piece.

Idiomatic: "Kàràkàrà is calling and blood drips from its beak; it says even if its mouth tears to the occiput, it will continue its calling." 1

Meaning: As long as a serious problem persists, one should not stop calling for help, however costly the calling becomes.

Used when: Owomoyela's note: "As long as a serious problem persists, one should not stop calling for help" 1

Notes: Owomoyela's footnote to kàràkàrà itself: "kàràkàrà is an obscure name for a kind of animal that makes loud noises" [S1, note 64]. Unlike entries 3 and 4, where the obscurity concerns a proper name or a specific phrase's sense, here the very identity of the creature at the centre of the proverb is unrecoverable; the proverb's meaning survives this gap because the general image (a persistent, self-injuring cry) is clear even though the specific referent is not, which is itself informative about how much of a proverb's force can be independent of full lexical recovery.

Source: 1 Owomoyela 2344, with note 64.

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Reading this set

Three distinct kinds of disputed meaning appear here, and they should not be collapsed into one category. Entries 3 and 6 are obscurities of reference, a proper name or a creature's identity that Owomoyela cannot recover, where the proverb's general sense nonetheless survives. Entry 4 is a genuine tonal ambiguity affecting the literal content of the saying, with three grammatically possible and semantically distinct readings that Owomoyela lays out without choosing among them. Entries 1 and 5 are ambiguities built into the proverb's own content, a numeral standing for two different quantities, or a narrative open enough to support two opposed morals, rather than gaps in the compiler's knowledge. A reader who wants a single confident gloss for any of these six proverbs should go back to Owomoyela's own footnotes rather than accept a synthesis this corpus has not manufactured.