<u>Don’t count your chickens before the eggs have hatched</u>
- (a)If you are not good at something, better to avoid that
- (b)Don’t make plans for something that might not happen
- (c)Not to come up to expectations
- (d)Don’t put all your resources in one possibility
Correct — B, Don’t make plans for something that might not happen. The proverb warns you not to treat a hoped-for result as already yours: the eggs may never hatch, so the chickens are not there to be counted yet. Counting them is exactly the act of building on an outcome that is still uncertain, which is what option (b) forbids.
- (a)If you are not good at something, better to avoid that — This is advice about your own ability. The proverb says nothing about being good or bad at anything; it is about timing, and about waiting until a result is certain.
- (c)Not to come up to expectations — That is the meaning of a different phrase altogether, the one asked about in the previous question of this very paper. It also describes a failure that has already occurred, whereas this proverb warns about a hope that has not yet been settled.
- (d)Don’t put all your resources in one possibility — That is the advice of 'don't put all your eggs in one basket', a different proverb that happens to share the word 'eggs'. It warns against concentrating risk in one place; this one warns against banking on a result before it arrives.
An idiom item on the proverb that warns against relying on a favourable outcome before it is certain.
Option (d) is the trap, because it borrows the word 'eggs' from a genuinely similar-sounding proverb about baskets. Keeping the two apart is a matter of what each one measures. The basket proverb is about spreading risk across several places at one time; this one is about the moment at which you may safely treat a result as real. Note also that the paper prints the saying as 'before the eggs have hatched'; the wording usually met is 'before they hatch', and the sense is unchanged.
- Wiktionary gives the sense as 'one should not depend upon a favorable, and typically overoptimistic, outcome to one's plans until it is certain to occur'.
- The saying appears in English as early as 1570, in Thomas Howell's New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets — 'Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be, / Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee.'
- 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is a separate proverb about spreading risk, and the two are often confused because both use eggs.
- Choosing the basket proverb's meaning because the word 'eggs' appears in both.
- Treating a warning about an uncertain future as a comment on a failure already suffered.
Asked as a proverb item in which one wrong option carries the meaning of a different proverb built on the same image.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — <u>don't put all your eggs in one basket</u>
- (a)do not spend money on small things
- (b)do not risk everything on a single venture
- (c)do not carry more than you can hold
- (d)do not share your plans with others
Answer(b) do not risk everything on a single venture.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — <u>look before you leap</u>
- (a)act quickly before the chance is lost
- (b)think about the consequences before acting
- (c)follow the example of others
- (d)keep your plans to yourself
Answer(b) think about the consequences before acting.