Because many proverbs are both poetic and traditional, they are often passed down in fixed forms. Though spoken language may change, many proverbs are often preserved in conservative, even archaic, form. In English, for example, "betwixt" is not used by many, but a form of it is still heard (or read) in the proverb "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." The conservative form preserves the meter and the rhyme. This conservative nature of proverbs can result in archaic words and grammatical structures being preserved in individual proverbs, as has been documented in Amharic, Greek, Nsenga, Polish, Venda and Hebrew.