Modern Proverbs Appeal (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

If I had a hammer, and everything looked like a nail, I'd hammer...all over this land.

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Modern Proverbs Appeal (UNCLASSIFIED)
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At 2:15 PM -0400 5/24/07, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Thu, 24 May 2007, Jim Parish wrote:
>
>>The version I'm familiar with - which I do use as a proverb - is "To a
>>man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I don't know where I
>>ran across it, though.
>
>I suppose it could be considered a quotation that has become proverbial.
>
A slight (and sex-neutraller) variant I've usually heard is "If you
have a hammer,..."

LH

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