Write to the editors

Every essay on this site is an argument about meaning, and arguments about meaning are never finished. If you grew up with one of these proverbs and we've rendered it flatly — missed the joke, ironed out the irony, chosen the wrong cousin — that's exactly the note we most want. A correction from someone who carries the saying in their mouth is worth more than a week of our own reading.

The messages we answer fastest fall into four kinds:

• Corrections. A mistranslation, a misattributed origin, a proverb we've paired with a false friend. Tell us what's wrong and, if you can, how you know.
• Native-speaker collaborations. If a language you speak is underrepresented here, we'd like to hear from you before we write about it. We credit contributors and take sourcing seriously.
• Source suggestions. A proverb dictionary, an anthology, a paremiology paper we should be reading. The bibliography on our sources page is the spine of the project and we grow it slowly.
• Syndication and reprints. If you'd like to run an essay elsewhere, ask first — we'll almost always say yes for non-commercial use with attribution.

What we can't help with: homework answers, bulk translation requests, or what a tattoo says. For those, a good dictionary will serve you better than we can.