/ˌdəʊnt ˈkaʊnt jɔː ˈt͡ʃɪkɪnz bɪˌfɔː ðeɪ ˈhæt͡ʃ/
English idiom, everyday. Don’t count on a good result before it has actually happened.
Draft Not yet checked by a native English speaker.
How do people use Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
?
A proverb, used as a friendly warning to someone celebrating early: a job offer that isn’t signed, a match that isn’t over. Most of the time people just say “don’t count your chickens” and let the listener finish it. It also works as a description: “he’s counting his chickens before they’re hatched.”
Also said don’t count your chickens, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
in real sentences
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Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
Tatoeba, sentence by jakov, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Don’t count your chickens.
Tatoeba, sentence by CM, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
come from?
The first English printing usually cited is a couplet in Thomas Howell’s New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets (1570): “Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be.” Samuel Butler mocked people who “count their Chickens ere th’ are hatch’d” in Hudibras (1663), which shows it was familiar by then. It’s often tied to Aesop’s fable of the milkmaid who daydreams about the chickens her milk money will buy and then spills the milk, but Phrase Finder points out that the moral was added to modern retellings and isn’t an ancient line.
Mistakes learners make with Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
Saying “don’t count the chickens”. The idiom needs the possessive (“your”, “his”, “their”), because the point is your own hopes, and with “the” it sounds like advice about a farm.
Other English idioms like Don’t count your chickens before they hatch
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