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Timeless wisdom or shifting meaning?

The adaptation of death-related proverbs across cultures

ORCiD logo with link | University of Greifswald
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Universität Greifswald.

Published online: 23 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.24027.lan
Abstract
This study investigates the cross linguistic transmission and semantic development of death related proverbs in English, focusing on expressions with counterparts in Latin, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and cognitive semantic approaches, the analysis examines whether the metaphorical frameworks embedded in foreign originated proverbs are retained, partially shifted, or reinterpreted in English. A three level analytical scale is employed to assess degrees of semantic continuity between donor language proverbs and their English counterparts. A dataset of 44 death related proverbs was compiled from the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs and supplemented with etymological information. Contemporary usage was examined through corpus analysis of newspaper data from Nexis Uni. Compiled by LexisNexis GmbH, Dusseldorf, Germany; available online at (last accessed 03 March 2024), providing empirical evidence of how these proverbs function in modern discourse. The findings reveal patterns of metaphorical persistence and transformation, illustrating how linguistic borrowing and cultural exchange shape the evolution of figurative meaning. Beyond linguistic comparison, the study contributes to broader discussions of cultural transmission and metaphorical universality, showing how proverb adaptation reflects both shared cognitive structures and culture specific reinterpretations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Methodology, Data and Terminology
  • 4.Tracing the evolution of death-related proverbs: Metaphors across linguistic traditions
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Dictionaries and databases
References (30)
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Dictionaries and databases
Nexis Uni. Compiled by LexisNexis GmbH, Dusseldorf, Germany; available online at (last accessed 03 March 2024)
OPD = Speake, J. (Ed.). (2015). Oxford dictionary of proverbs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
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