Òwe on Òwe: Proverbs, Wisdom, and the Speech That Carries Them
Twenty-six Yorùbá proverbs about proverbs themselves and about the wise, understood speech that makes them work, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
An òwe is a Yorùbá proverb, and this file collects proverbs that turn back on the genre itself: what a proverb does in an argument, why the person who commands proverbs wins a dispute, and what it means for speech to be understood at all. Around that narrow core sits a wider set of sayings about ọgbọ́n, wisdom, the quality of judgment that lets a person use proverbs well, recognize one aimed at them, and speak in a way that lands. Read together, the set describes a culture in which fluent, indirect, proverb-carrying speech is a competitive social skill, and in which wisdom is measured less by what a person privately knows than by how well they can make themselves and others understood.
This is a genuinely narrow topic. Oyekan Owomoyela's 5,235-entry collection yields only a handful of proverbs that are about the proverb genre in the strict sense, so this file also draws on his proverbs about wisdom, understanding, and disputed speech, where the connection to metalanguage is real but looser. Twenty-six proverbs met that bar after verification. That is well under this series' 40-70 target, and it is reported honestly rather than padded: several dozen further candidates surfaced in the search were generic wisdom-and-folly proverbs whose subject is a wise or foolish person's conduct rather than speech, proverbs, or understanding as such, and belong more properly with owe-iwa-character; they are excluded here rather than counted toward this file's total.
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 is his, it is quoted. Literal glosses are the compiler's own, checked against Owomoyela's translation and against the raw scanned text where a printed rendering appeared incomplete.
A note on sources and selection
Owomoyela prints full standard orthography with tone marks, and his texts are reproduced here as printed . Two entries relevant to this topic were excluded for reasons worth stating. Entry 1445, Bí òwe ò bá jọ òwe, a kì í pa á ("if a proverb does not resemble a proverb, one does not utter it"), has a translation cut off by a page break in the scanned source consulted, the same kind of gap noted and handled the same way in owe-speech-silence-tongue: dropped rather than completed by guesswork. A cluster of proverbs already appear in sibling files in this corpus and are excluded here to avoid duplication: the "horse of speech" proverb (Òwe l'ẹsin ọ̀rọ̀, Owomoyela 5188) is the founding example in yoruba-owe-proverbs; Bí òwe bí òwe nIfá ńsọ̀rọ̀ (870) appears in owe-ifa-babalawo-divination; and Àwíyé ní ḿmú ọ̀ràn yéni, Àwíyé nIfẹ̀ ńfọ̀, Àsọ̀rọ̀àìlàdí ló pa Elempe, and A-mọ̀ràn-mòwe ní ńlàdí ọ̀rọ̀ (2459, 2460, 2454, 4719) all appear in owe-speech-silence-tongue.
What a proverb is and does
1. Olówe laláṣẹ̀ ọ̀rọ̀.
Literal: Olówe the-owner-of-proverbs laláṣẹ̀ ọ̀rọ̀ is-the-authority of-a-matter.
Idiomatic: "A person who knows proverbs has the last word in a dispute."
Meaning: Command of the proverb repertoire is itself a form of authority in an argument, independent of who is otherwise right.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There is no authority like proverbial authority"
Notes: Olówe, owner-of-proverbs, is formed on the productive oní-/ol- possessive prefix seen throughout this corpus (oníwà, owner of character; elénìní, owner of enmity), which treats fluency in proverbs as a kind of property a person holds rather than a skill they merely display. The proverb states outright the premise that yoruba-owe-proverbs argues at length: that proverbial speech is a move in adjudication, not decoration on top of an argument that would otherwise stand or fall on its own.
2. Bí a bá wí a dàbí òwe; bí a ò bá wí a dàbí ìjà.
Literal: Bí a bá wí if one speaks a dàbí òwe it resembles a-proverb; bí a ò bá wí if one does-not speak a dàbí ìjà it resembles a-fight.
Idiomatic: "If one speaks, it sounds like speaking in proverbs; if one does not speak, it seems like picking a fight."
Meaning: In certain tense situations, any direct statement will sound like the indirection of a proverb aimed at someone, and silence will read as open hostility; there is no neutral option.
Used when: Owomoyela: "In certain delicate situations no option is safe"
Notes: The proverb is a piece of pragmatic theory about its own genre: it observes that once a room is tense enough, an ordinary sentence is heard the way a proverb is heard, as aimed at someone in particular, which is exactly the interpretive move a real proverb depends on and invites even from speech that was not meant proverbially. It sits usefully beside entry 3 below, which describes the reverse case, someone hearing a proverb correctly as aimed at them and having to decide how to respond.
3. Bí olówe-é bá mọ òwe-e rẹ̀, tí kò já a, ẹ̀rù ìjà ḿbà á ni.
Literal: Bí olówe-é bá mọ òwe-e rẹ̀ if the-target-of-the-proverb recognizes his proverb, tí kò já a but does-not acknowledge-it, ẹ̀rù ìjà fear of-a-fight ḿbà á ni is-frightening-him.
Idiomatic: "If the butt of a proverb recognizes but does not acknowledge it, he is afraid of a fight."
Meaning: Recognizing that a proverb was aimed at you and choosing not to react is read as a sign of fear, not of dignity.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A person who has reason to take offense but does not is avoiding a fight"
Notes: Olówe here takes a second, distinct sense from entry 1: not the person who knows proverbs, but the person a proverb has been used against, a usage Owomoyela glosses elsewhere in his notes as "the person to whom the proverb is applied." The two senses of the same word, the wielder of a proverb and its target, are near-homophones distinguished only by context, and this proverb assumes a listener already fluent enough to catch an indirect hit and to be judged on how they absorb it, which is the social competence this whole file is about.
4. Kì í tètè yéni: òwe ńlá ni.
Literal: Kì í tètè yéni it-does-not quickly become-clear-to-one: òwe ńlá ni it-is a-great proverb.
Idiomatic: "One never learns in good time: that is a profound proverb."
Meaning: The observation that wisdom always arrives too late to prevent the mistake it explains is itself held up, inside the proverb, as an example of proverbial depth.
Used when: Owomoyela: "People tend always to learn wisdom too late"
Notes: This is a proverb that names its own genre in its second clause and grades itself, calling itself a "great" or "profound" proverb rather than simply stating its content and stopping. That self-referential gesture, a saying commenting on its own weight as a saying, is unusual in the corpus and worth marking as evidence that Yorùbá speakers held some proverbs to be recognizably deeper than others, a graded rather than flat category.
5. Ẹni tó mọ èyí tí yó gbẹ̀hìn ọ̀rọ̀ là ńpè lágbà.
Literal: Ẹni tó mọ the-one who knows èyí tí yó gbẹ̀hìn ọ̀rọ̀ that-which will end-the matter là ńpè lágbà is-whom one calls an-elder.
Idiomatic: "Only the person who knows the last word in a matter deserves the title of elder."
Meaning: Elder status is earned by the capacity to say the thing that closes a dispute, not by age alone.
Used when: Owomoyela: "An elder earns his status by his effectiveness in settling disputes"
Notes: Gbẹ̀hìn ọ̀rọ̀, the last word of a matter, is a technical phrase for the closing statement that ends an argument rather than merely the final thing said, and this proverb makes command of that closing statement, which in practice is very often a proverb, the actual criterion for the title àgbà, elder. It is the clearest statement in this file that elder authority in speech is functional and demonstrated rather than simply granted by seniority, a claim in tension with the proverbs elsewhere in this corpus that treat age itself as sufficient warrant to speak.
6. A-wọ́n-bí-ọgbọ́n, aṣòroódà bí àgbà.
Literal: A-wọ́n-bí-ọgbọ́n scarce-like-wisdom, aṣòroódà bí àgbà difficult-to-become-like an-elder.
Idiomatic: "Scarce as wisdom, difficult to become as an elder."
Meaning: Wisdom is rare, and the standing of a true elder is correspondingly hard to reach.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Wisdom is not common; achieving the traits of a sage is not easy"
Notes: The whole proverb is a pair of coined compound epithets rather than a full sentence, the same construction seen elsewhere in this corpus for titles applied to a specific person in conversation (oníwà, aṣòroófinúhàn in owe-secrets-gossip-rumour). Yoking wisdom's scarcity directly to the difficulty of becoming an elder treats the two as the same achievement measured two ways, which sets up entry 5's claim that elderhood is earned by demonstrated speech rather than granted by years.
Wisdom and eloquence in speech
7. Ọlọgbọ́n ló lè mọ àdììtú èdè.
Literal: Ọlọgbọ́n the-wise-one ló lè mọ is-who can know àdììtú èdè the-riddle of-language.
Idiomatic: "Only a wise person can decipher the meaning of speech."
Meaning: Fully grasping what has actually been said, beneath its surface wording, is a specialized competence, not something every hearer can do.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The deep meanings and nuances of an utterance are for only the wise to understand"
Notes: Àdììtú, riddle or puzzle, is not a loose figure here: it makes language itself, in ordinary use and not only in the formal riddle-game genre, something that must be solved rather than simply heard. This is the most direct statement in the corpus of a working theory of Yorùbá indirection: that ordinary speech, and especially proverb speech, is constructed to require interpretive work, and that the work is a mark of wisdom in whoever does it successfully.
8. Bí o kò gbọ́ Ègùn, o kò gbọ́ wọ̀yọ̀-wọ̀yọ̀.
Literal: Bí o kò gbọ́ Ègùn if you do-not understand Ègùn, o kò gbọ́ wọ̀yọ̀-wọ̀yọ̀ do-you-not hear the-sound-of-speaking.
Idiomatic: "If you do not understand Ègùn, do you not recognize signs that someone is speaking?"
Meaning: Not understanding a language does not mean failing to register that speech is happening; recognizing an utterance as speech and grasping its content are two separate acts.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One may not understand what a person says, but one will be able to tell that the person is speaking"
Notes: Ègùn (Gùn, or Fon) is a real neighboring language spoken to the Yorùbá-speaking area's west, so the proverb is not a hypothetical about foreign speech in general but names a specific, actually unintelligible language a Yorùbá speaker would plausibly have encountered. Wọ̀yọ̀-wọ̀yọ̀ is an ideophone for the sound-texture of talk, distinct from its content, and the proverb's argument depends on that distinction: recognizing the ideophone of speech-happening is available even where comprehension is not. It is a precise observation about the layered nature of listening and belongs with entry 7 as this file's clearest pair on the mechanics of understanding.
9. Ọ̀yọ́ ò gbọ́ "Wòde," Ìjèṣà ò gbọ́ "Wọdà"; Ọ̀yọ́ gbọ́ "Wọdà" bí ẹní gbọ́ Ifá.
Literal: Ọ̀yọ́ ò gbọ́ the-Ọ̀yọ́-person does-not understand "Wòde," Ìjèṣà ò gbọ́ the-Ìjèṣà-person does-not understand "Wọdà" [i.e. Ìwọ dà?, "where are you?"]; Ọ̀yọ́ gbọ́ "Wọdà" the-Ọ̀yọ́-person understands "Wọdà" bí ẹní gbọ́ Ifá as-well-as one understands Ifá.
Idiomatic: "Ọ̀yọ́ people do not understand 'Wòde,' Ìjèṣà people do not understand 'Wọdà'; Ọ̀yọ́ people understand 'Wọdà' as well as they understand Ifá."
Meaning: Dialect variation means the same greeting can be immediately clear to one Yorùbá subgroup and opaque to another, so that no single group's speech is a universal standard.
Used when: Owomoyela: "What one person knows, another person does not know; together they can solve all their problems"
Notes: Ọ̀yọ́ and Ìjèṣà are historical Yorùbá subgroups with recognizably distinct dialects, and the proverb's comparison to understanding Ifá, the divination corpus whose verses require trained interpretation, is a deliberate escalation: it says a fellow Yorùbá-speaker's regional greeting can be as opaque to an outsider as a specialist oracular text. Read against entry 8's proverb about Ègùn, a genuinely foreign language, this proverb makes the harder claim that unintelligibility does not require crossing into a different language at all, only a different dialect region, which is a more uncomfortable admission about the limits of a shared tongue.
10. Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá: bí a ò bá là á, kì í yéni.
Literal: Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá six-hundred-and-thirteen: bí a ò bá là á if one does-not clarify-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."
Meaning: A specialized figure or term, however precise, communicates nothing until someone glosses it; precision and clarity are not the same property.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Ambiguous statements result in confusion"
Notes: Ẹgbẹ̀tàlá is a specific number in the Yorùbá base-twenty counting system, a system that produces compound numerals opaque to anyone who has not learned its logic, so the proverb picks a real example of a term that is exact and simultaneously useless without explanation, rather than a vague or careless one. It is a tighter companion to the point owe-speech-silence-tongue makes with the cowrie-string proverb excluded from this file (Owomoyela 2459): both proverbs argue that clarity is manufactured by explicit work and never arrives on its own, but this one demonstrates the claim with a single opaque word rather than an extended image.
11. Ẹni tí ó gbọ́n tó ńpurọ́; ẹni tó mọ̀ràn tó ńṣèké; ẹni tó mọ̀ pé nǹkan ò sí tó ńtọrọ; èwo ló sàn nínú àwọn mẹ́tẹ̀ẹ̀ta?
Literal: Ẹni tí ó gbọ́n tó ńpurọ́ the-one who is-wise yet lies; ẹni tó mọ̀ràn tó ńṣèké the-one who knows-counsel yet dissembles; ẹni tó mọ̀ pé nǹkan ò sí tó ńtọrọ the-one who knows a-thing is-not-there yet asks-for-it; èwo ló sàn which-one is-better nínú àwọn mẹ́tẹ̀ẹ̀ta among the-three?
Idiomatic: "The person who is wise and yet lies, the person who knows the truth and yet dissembles, the person who knows one has nothing and yet asks for something: which is any good among the three?"
Meaning: Wisdom, knowledge, and awareness are worth nothing, and may be worse than worthless, when deployed to deceive rather than to speak honestly.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The liar, the dissembler, and the one who would embarrass you are all equally evil"
Notes: The proverb is built as a formal rhetorical question with three matched clauses, each pairing a form of knowing with its dishonest misuse, and the question at the end refuses to rank the three, which is itself the argument: possessing wisdom or discernment supplies no defense once it is turned toward lying, so the comparison collapses rather than resolving. It stands as a corrective to the many proverbs elsewhere in this file that treat wisdom as an unqualified good; here wisdom's value is made conditional on how it is spoken.
Understanding and its limits
12. Ọ̀mọ̀ràn ní ḿmọ oyún ìgbín.
Literal: Ọ̀mọ̀ràn the-knowledgeable-one ní ḿmọ is-who knows oyún ìgbín the-pregnancy of-a-snail.
Idiomatic: "Only a sage knows the pregnancy of a snail."
Meaning: Some facts are so deeply hidden that only the most discerning person could perceive them at all.
Used when: Owomoyela offers no usage note for this entry in the material consulted; the proverb is self-explanatory as a statement about the limits of ordinary perception .
Notes: A snail's soft body gives almost no external sign of anything happening inside it, so the image names a fact about as thoroughly concealed as a fact can be, and crediting the ọ̀mọ̀ràn, the sage or discerning knower, with perceiving it anyway sets an extreme upper bound on what wisdom is claimed to achieve. Alongside entry 7's riddle of language, this proverb extends the file's running claim that the wise person's advantage is perceptual as much as verbal: they see what is not shown, not only what is said.
13. Bí ọgbọ́n bá tán nínú, a tún òmíràn dá.
Literal: Bí ọgbọ́n bá tán nínú if wisdom becomes exhausted inside, a tún òmíràn dá one creates another-one anew.
Idiomatic: "When an elder has exhausted all his wisdom, he turns to another's wisdom."
Meaning: When a person's own store of wisdom runs out, the resourceful response is to draw on someone else's rather than to be stuck.
Used when: Owomoyela: "An elder is never at a loss for what to do"
Notes: The verb dá, to create or originate, applied to "another wisdom," frames borrowing counsel from someone else not as an admission of insufficiency but as an act of invention in its own right, a reframing that keeps the elder's standing intact even at the moment their own resources fail. It pairs naturally with entry 14, which makes the same point about drawing on other people's wisdom as a matter of course rather than of last resort.
14. Ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n la fi ńṣọgbọ́n; ìmọ̀ràn ẹnìkan ò tọ́ bọ̀rọ̀.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n the-wisdom of-a-wise-person la fi ńṣọgbọ́n is-what-we-use to-be-wise; ìmọ̀ràn ẹnìkan the-counsel of-one-person ò tọ́ bọ̀rọ̀ does-not amount-to a-matter.
Idiomatic: "One learns wisdom from other people's wisdom; one person's knowledge does not amount to anything."
Meaning: Wisdom is built out of other people's wisdom, and a single person's private knowledge, kept to themselves, is worth very little.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Wisdom and knowledge are best shared"
Notes: The doubled ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n, wisdom-of-a-wise-person, repeats the root the way several proverbs in owe-iwa-character repeat ìwà for emphasis, and the effect is to insist that wisdom is inherently relational and cumulative, transmitted from person to person, rather than an individual possession generated in isolation. Set against entry 6's claim that wisdom is scarce, this proverb suggests the scarcity is a distributional problem, not an absolute one: wisdom exists in the community's pooled speech and must be actively drawn from it.
15. Ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n ò jẹ́ ká pe àgbà ní wèrè.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n the-wisdom of-a-wise-person ò jẹ́ ká pe àgbà ní wèrè does-not allow that-we call an-elder a-lunatic.
Idiomatic: "Other people's wisdom saves the elder from being called a lunatic."
Meaning: An elder who is willing to be corrected or advised by others is protected, by that willingness, from the embarrassment that stubbornness would otherwise bring.
Used when: Owomoyela: "The person who can learn from others will avoid a lot of embarrassment"
Notes: The proverb uses the identical opening phrase as entry 14, ọgbọ́n ọlọgbọ́n, other people's wisdom, but draws a different conclusion from it, reputational protection rather than intellectual sufficiency, which is a useful demonstration of how the same compact Yorùbá phrase is redeployed across proverbs to make related but distinct points. It also sits in quiet tension with entry 5's claim that elder status is earned by producing the decisive word oneself: here the elder's standing depends on knowing when to accept someone else's word instead.
16. Ọ̀ràn ọlọ́ràn la fi ńkọ́gbọ́n.
Literal: Ọ̀ràn ọlọ́ràn the-problem of-another-person la fi ńkọ́gbọ́n is-what-we-use to-learn wisdom.
Idiomatic: "From other people's problems one learns wisdom."
Meaning: Wisdom is acquired by observing what happens to other people, not only by living through one's own troubles.
Used when: Owomoyela: "One should learn from other people's vicissitudes"
Notes: Kọ́gbọ́n, to learn wisdom, is a single verb-plus-object compound, the same construction seen in entry 33 of owe-iwa-character (à-bí-ì-kọ́ ... ni ó ti ńkọ́gbọ́n wálé, learning wisdom from outside the home), and this proverb generalizes that idea from the household specifically to other people's misfortune generally as a teaching source. It supplies the practical mechanism behind the abstract claims of entries 13 and 14: wisdom is drawn from others not only by asking their counsel directly but by watching what befalls them.
17. Ẹnìkan kì í gbọ́n tán.
Literal: Ẹnìkan one-person kì í gbọ́n tán is-never wise completely.
Idiomatic: "Nobody is all wise."
Meaning: No individual possesses complete wisdom; there is always a remainder left over that someone else holds.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Everybody can learn something from others"
Notes: Four words, and the compression matches the claim: total wisdom is stated and immediately denied to any single person, in a form too short to leave room for exception. This is the clearest single-sentence justification in the file for why wisdom in Yorùbá thought is treated as distributed across a community rather than concentrated in any one wise person, the premise entries 13, 14, and 16 all build on without stating outright.
18. Pípé là ńpé gbọ́n, a kì í pé gọ.
Literal: Pípé là ńpé gbọ́n assembling is-how-we assemble to-be-wise, a kì í pé gọ one does-not assemble to-be-foolish.
Idiomatic: "People assemble to seek wisdom collectively; people do not assemble in order to become stupid."
Meaning: The purpose of gathering people together to deliberate is to arrive at wisdom; a consultation that produces folly has failed at its own stated purpose.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Consultation should lead to wisdom, not folly"
Notes: Pípé, assembling or convening, names the actual practice of gathering elders or interested parties to deliberate on a matter, a real procedural step in Yorùbá dispute resolution rather than a figure of speech, so the proverb is best read as a standard directed at that specific institution: a council that produces a foolish outcome has misused the form it convened under. It belongs naturally with entry 1's claim about proverbial authority in dispute settlement, since a pípé is exactly the kind of setting in which proverb fluency would be exercised.
19. Ọmọdé gbọ́n, Ààrẹ́ gbọ́n, la fi ńtẹ ilẹ̀ Ifẹ̀.
Literal: Ọmọdé gbọ́n a-child is-wise, Ààrẹ́ gbọ́n the-chief is-wise, la fi ńtẹ ilẹ̀ Ifẹ̀ is-how-we conduct-affairs in-the-land of-Ifẹ̀.
Idiomatic: "A youth is wise, and the chief is wise: that is the principle by which people go about at Ifẹ̀."
Meaning: At Ifẹ̀, a young person's counsel is treated as being worth as much consideration as a chief's; wisdom is not ranked by the speaker's seniority.
Used when: Owomoyela: "A youth's counsel is as worth entertaining as a chief's"
Notes: Ilé-Ifẹ̀ is credited throughout Yorùbá tradition as the origin town of the Yorùbá people and, as in entry 28 of owe-speech-silence-tongue (Àwíyé nIfẹ̀ ńfọ̀, excluded from this file as a duplicate), often functions in proverbs as a place whose practice sets the standard others are measured against. Naming Ifẹ̀ specifically as the place where a child's wisdom and a chief's wisdom are weighed the same is a pointed claim, since it runs directly against the corpus-wide default that speech authority tracks age (compare entries 5 and 6 above), and it should be read as a counter-current inside the tradition rather than as the tradition's settled position.
20. Àkùkọ gàgàrà ní ńdájọ́ fúnni láàrin ọ̀gànjọ.
Literal: Àkùkọ gàgàrà a-mature, full-grown rooster ní ńdájọ́ fúnni is-what settles-a-case for-one láàrin ọ̀gànjọ in-the-middle of-the-night.
Idiomatic: "It is a mature rooster that settles disputes for people in the dead of night."
Meaning: A fact that speaks for itself, like the rooster's crow announcing dawn, ends an argument more decisively than any speaker's testimony.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Incontrovertible evidence settles all disagreement"
Notes: The rooster's crow was, in practice, the ordinary way time was marked before dawn, so the proverb's image is drawn from a genuine daily fact rather than an invented one: no one can argue with the rooster about whether it is nearly morning. It is included here as this file's clearest statement that the ideal resolution to a dispute is not skillful proverbial argument at all but evidence that requires no argument, a useful counterweight to entries 1 and 18, which locate authority in the person who speaks best rather than in the fact that settles the matter on its own.
21. Igúnnugún gbọ́n sínú.
Literal: Igúnnugún the-vulture gbọ́n sínú is-wise inside.
Idiomatic: "The vulture conceals a lot of wisdom in itself."
Meaning: A creature or a person that looks unimpressive or foolish on the outside may hold real wisdom that does not show.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Even a person who appears foolish may be quite astute"
Notes: The vulture is a scavenger with an unglamorous public reputation in Yorùbá proverb imagery generally, which makes it a pointed choice for this claim: the proverb specifically denies that wisdom can be read off appearance or social standing, extending to intelligence the same warning the corpus gives about character in owe-iwa-character (entry 47, the gentle man with hard character underneath). It is a caution against the very inference several proverbs in this file otherwise invite, that a fool's speech marks a fool's mind (see entry 11 above).
22. Kò sí ẹni tí kò mọ ọgbọ́n-ọn ká fẹran sẹ́nu ká wá a tì.
Literal: Kò sí ẹni there-is-no one tí kò mọ ọgbọ́n-ọn who does-not know the-trick ká fẹran sẹ́nu of-putting-meat in-the-mouth ká wá a tì and then hiding-it.
Idiomatic: "There is nobody who does not know the trick of putting meat in the mouth and making it disappear."
Meaning: Everyone possesses at least the basic cunning needed to look after their own immediate interest.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Nobody is a complete fool"
Notes: Ọgbọ́n, wisdom, is used here in its narrower, almost tactical sense of a trick or a knack rather than the deeper moral and interpretive sense it carries in most of this file's other entries, a reminder that the single word covers a range from cunning self-interest to the capacity to decipher speech (entry 7) or perceive the hidden (entry 12). Paired with entry 17's "nobody is all wise," this proverb supplies the floor to match that ceiling: nobody has complete wisdom, and nobody has none at all.
23. Ọgbọ́n ju agbára.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n wisdom ju agbára exceeds strength.
Idiomatic: "Wisdom is greater than strength."
Meaning: Wisdom outranks physical or coercive power as a resource.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Always prefer wisdom to strength"
Notes: Three words, using the comparative ju construction found throughout this corpus for ranking one value above another (compare Orúkọ rere sàn ju wúrà àti fàdákà lọ, a good name exceeds gold and silver, in yoruba-owe-proverbs). It functions as a plain thesis statement rather than an image, and it is worth reading beside entries 24 through 26 below, which restate the same ranking from slightly different angles, together forming a small cluster of maximally compressed wisdom aphorisms that appear to have circulated as a set.
24. Ọgbọ́n kì í tán.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n wisdom kì í tán is-never used-up.
Idiomatic: "Wisdom is never used up."
Meaning: Wisdom does not deplete with use; there will always be more of it available and a use for it.
Used when: Owomoyela: "There will always be a place and some use for wisdom"
Notes: Tán, to be finished or exhausted, is the same verb used of consumable resources running out, so denying it of wisdom treats wisdom as categorically different from money, food, or any other good this corpus's proverbs elsewhere describe as subject to depletion (see the many entries on wealth and poverty in owe-iwa-character). It anticipates entry 13's related but distinct claim, that even one elder's own wisdom, though it can run low in a given moment, is never permanently exhausted because another's wisdom is always available.
25. Ọgbọ́n la fi ńgbé ayé.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n wisdom la fi ńgbé ayé is-what-we-use to-live in-the-world.
Idiomatic: "One needs wisdom to live in this world."
Meaning: Wisdom is not an optional refinement but a practical requirement for getting through life.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Wisdom is indispensable"
Notes: Gbé ayé, to live in or conduct oneself in the world, is the standard Yorùbá phrase for practical, everyday conduct rather than for abstract existence, so the proverb's claim is deliberately unglamorous: wisdom is being valued here as a tool for daily survival, not as a mark of philosophical depth. Set against entry 23's comparison to strength, this proverb makes the stronger and more absolute claim, not merely that wisdom outranks strength but that without it, living itself is not properly accomplished.
26. Ọgbọ́n dùn-ún gbọ́n; ìmọ̀ dùn-ún mọ̀.
Literal: Ọgbọ́n wisdom dùn-ún gbọ́n is-sweet to-be-wise; ìmọ̀ knowledge dùn-ún mọ̀ is-sweet to-know.
Idiomatic: "Wisdom is a good thing to have; knowledge is a good thing to have."
Meaning: Both wisdom and knowledge are, straightforwardly, good things to possess.
Used when: Owomoyela: "Always seek wisdom and knowledge"
Notes: Dùn, sweet, is the same adjective used elsewhere in this corpus for pleasing or agreeable speech (Bí ọ̀rọ̀ bá dùn, if a matter is sweet, in yoruba-owe-proverbs), and applying it here to wisdom and knowledge treats them as sources of the same kind of pleasure ordinary agreeable things provide, rather than setting them apart as a separate, loftier category. Closing this file's run of short wisdom aphorisms, the proverb pairs ọgbọ́n and ìmọ̀, wisdom and knowledge, as related but distinct goods, a distinction the file's other entries bear out: ìmọ̀ is closer to information (what the sage in entry 12 perceives), while ọgbọ́n is closer to the skill of using it, especially in speech.
Reading this set
Two things stand out across these twenty-six proverbs, and one honest limitation needs stating plainly.
Wisdom in this set is a speech competence before it is anything else. Wisdom lets a person decipher what has actually been said (entry 7), recognize a proverb aimed at them (entry 3), supply the closing word that ends a dispute (entry 5), and speak clearly enough to be understood across a dialect boundary (entry 9) or after enough explanation (entry 10). Where the corpus's proverbs about ìwà, character, treat the good person as a certain kind of being, this smaller set treats the wise person as a certain kind of communicator: someone who produces and receives speech more precisely than others do. That is a narrower, more functional picture of wisdom than "moral goodness," and it is worth keeping the two apart rather than collapsing wisdom-proverbs into character-proverbs, which is exactly why proverbs that were only generically about a wise or foolish person's conduct, without a real connection to speech, understanding, or the proverb genre, were left out of this file even where a keyword search surfaced them.
The set does not agree on where wisdom's authority comes from. Entry 5 grounds elder status in demonstrated skill at ending disputes; entry 19 insists a child's wisdom counts as much as a chief's, cutting directly against seniority as the measure. Entry 17 says no one is ever completely wise; entries 13 and 14 answer that gap by making wisdom communal and borrowable rather than treating the limit as a problem. Entry 20 locates the ideal resolution to an argument in evidence that requires no clever speaker at all, which sits uneasily beside entry 1's claim that the best speaker simply wins. These are not contradictions to be resolved into one theory of Yorùbá wisdom; each proverb is fitted to a different occasion, and a collection that smoothed them into a single position would be inventing a consistency the record does not show.
The honest limitation is proportion. This file runs to twenty-six entries against this series' 40-to-70 target, and that shortfall reflects the genuine size of the topic in the documented record rather than a stopping point chosen for convenience. The proverb genre commenting directly on itself, in the strict sense of a saying about what an òwe is or does, is a small, specific category in Owomoyela's collection, well under a dozen clearly on-topic entries once the four already used in sibling files are set aside. Extending the file to the wider territory of wisdom, eloquence, and understanding was a deliberate and disclosed choice to give the topic a defensible size without pulling in the generic character-and-folly proverbs that belong to owe-iwa-character, or the proverbs about the tongue, silence, and gossip that belong to owe-speech-silence-tongue and owe-secrets-gossip-rumour. No further search of secondary scholarship on Yorùbá rhetorical theory turned up additional attested, translatable proverb texts distinct from what Owomoyela already supplies; where such scholarship exists, it tends to discuss the genre analytically rather than transmit new proverb texts with full diacritics, which this corpus's hard rule against inventing or reconstructing a text does not permit borrowing from secondhand.