old wives' tale

1. 1.

   a bit of lore passed on by word of mouth

   Broaderlore

Questions about old wives' tale

What does old wives' tale mean?

old wives' tale means "a bit of lore passed on by word of mouth".

Is old wives' tale a common word?

old wives' tale is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.