Abstract: The study overviews state of the art corpus based approaches to investigation of proverbs and sayings carried out by scholars all over the world. Various corpora provide a broad empirical basis for studying the usage of proverbs and for evaluation of constraints and preferences associated with specific vocabulary. Corpus-based approach provides an opportunity to gain valuable insight about the distribution of proverbs and their role in a language community. The most essential advantage of applying corpora in linguistic researches is its reliable empirical basis, constant updating and availability of proof of using a lexical unit in different meanings from a multiple number of sources of different genres.