the more you know
Meanings
phrase
- Used to imply that a piece of information that otherwise seems trivial or uninteresting might represent valuable knowledge.
Word forms
Etymology
An ellipsis (specifically, an anapodoton) representing the first part of a comparative correlative construction. Popularized by The More You Know (1989–present), an NBCUniversal series of public service announcements that features educational messages. The phrase's association with the emoji 🌠 is inspired by the graphics that accompany the phrase in that series. Collocations such as the more you know, the better [X] long predate the PSA series, but the more you know as an anapodoton seems not to predate it.
Related words
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This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.