Terms of Service

Whiteisms is a free reference to folksy sayings and how people use them. Read it, quote it, send it to your aunt. By using the site you accept these terms.

If you do not accept them, that is alright. Please close the tab rather than use the site.

Meanings, tone labels and usage examples are our own explanation of how a saying is used today. They are written in good faith and are editorial, not linguistic scholarship.

Where an origin is disputed or simply lost, we say so. A great many of these phrases have no reliable documentary history, and we would rather admit that than invent a story.

The site is provided for interest and entertainment. Do not rely on it for legal, medical or safety decisions, and please do not blame us if a phrase lands badly at a family dinner.

You can browse everything without an account. Accounts are for administrators who help maintain the archive and the journal.

Keep your sign-in to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

Voting is a way to say whether an explanation rings true. Please do not attempt to game vote counts with scripts or repeat submissions.

If you send us a message through the partnership and contact form, you confirm the details are yours to share and that we may reply to the address you gave us. Anything you send becomes part of our correspondence record.

Do not break the law here, attempt to gain access to parts of the site that are not yours, disrupt the service, or copy the archive wholesale to rebuild it somewhere else.

Searching, quoting and linking are all welcome. Scraping thousands of entries for a competing site is not.

The sayings themselves are folk material and belong to everybody. The write-ups, the archive's arrangement, the design, the wordmark and the journal are ours.

You may quote short excerpts with a link back. For anything larger, ask first through the contact form.

The site carries third-party advertising, including Google AdSense, and sponsored placements in the journal are labelled as paid. We do not control the products advertised and we do not endorse them.

Links to other sites are offered for interest. Their content and their terms are their own business.

We work to keep the site available and correct, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error free, or free of the occasional typo that has been sitting there since Tuesday.

To the extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the site, including a lost argument, an odd look from a coworker, or a phrase deployed in the wrong region.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

We may update these terms as the site grows. The date at the top of this page always shows the current version, and continuing to use the site after a change means the new version applies.

Questions about these terms, permissions, or a correction to an entry can go through the contact form on the Journal page.