don't count your chickens before they're hatched
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
First attested in English in Thomas Howell's 1570 New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets in the couplet "Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be, / Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee", possibly based off similar medieval and early modern Latin fables and maxims.
Proverb
Synonyms
- don't get your hopes up
Translations
don't count on things if you don't have them yet
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References
- Gregory Y. Titelman, Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings, 1996, →ISBN, p. 63.
- Jennifer Speake, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th ed., 2015, →ISBN, p. 60.
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