Morris Palmer Tilley

Morris Palmer Tilley was a 20th-century American scholar and lexicographer specializing in proverbial literature. He dedicated his career to cataloging early English sayings and idioms.

He is best known for his 1950 dictionary that cataloged English proverbs from the 16th and 17th centuries. The book is formally titled "A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries."

His meticulous cataloging assigned a unique number to every proverb, creating a standardized reference system. Folklorists and historians still use "Tilley numbers" today to easily trace the usage of specific historical sayings.

His work specifically catalogs proverbs that were used in England during the 1500s and 1600s. This era was a highly formative period for the modern English language.