Also called perverbs (a
contraction of perverse proverbs), thses are permutations of common
proverbs. a known saying that has been modified in a way that makes
it surprising, confounding or otherwise humorous. There are dozens
of ways of altering proverbs, common sayings and phrases. It has
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:
"Taste makes waist"
“Time flies like the wind, but fruit flies like a banana”
"Nothing succeeds like excess."
"When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws."
“The road to hell is the spice of life.”
"If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one to tweet about it,
did it really happen."
Anti-proverbs can take other forms beyond this type of splicing, as
in “a penny saved is a penny taxed” and “slaughter is the best
medicine.”