These are permutations of common proverbs,
often towards a humorous end. Another name is Perverbs.
There are dozens of ways of altering proverbs, and the general gist
of an anti-proverb is taking a known saying and twisting it around.
It’s been suggested that the original meaning of the term perverb
was to describe two proverbs that had been spliced together like a
sort of whole-sentence portmanteau. Take the perverb “every dog has
a silver lining,” a combination of “every dog has its day” and
“every cloud has a silver lining.” As with the further examples
below, you can see that the two hybridized proverbs are not random;
rather, they follow a certain format that both have in common:
“A fool and his money is a friend indeed.”
“The road to hell is the spice of life.”
“Don’t count your chickens in midstream.”
“A penny saved is a penny taxed”
“Slaughter is the best medicine.”
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