don't count your chickens before they're hatched

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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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 deriving from similar medieval and early modern Latin fables and maxims.

Proverb

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don't count your chickens before they're hatched

  1. One should not depend upon a favorable (and typically overoptimistic) outcome to one's plans until it is certain to occur.
    Synonyms: don't get your hopes up, don't sell the skin till you have caught the bear

Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

See also

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Further reading

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  • 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.