Strange Sayings.

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"Be that as it may..."

Why not just say, "Even if what you just told me is true, it is also completely irrelevant"?

Or even, "Don't confuse me with facts, as I have already made up my mind"?

You wouldn't "just" use either of those options for the obvious reason that "be that as it may" is only five syllables. and both of the other two are around twenty syllables.

The Mountain Goat Law Of Location.
You can't get lost as wherever you go, there you are!

'Don't count your chickens before they've hatched'

No one counts chickens before they're hatched. If it hasn't hatched, it's an egg, so you count eggs. Even if you were confident of a 100% survival rate you would still count eggs and then think I have six eggs therefor I will have six chickens.

"It was a near miss". If you nearly miss something, doesn't that mean you hit it? nearly = almost

"Irregardless". This is a double negative which would mean "not regardless" (?) The proper word is "regardless".

"We're leaving no later than _______ (time)". So, one minute later, you won't leave?

"If you're going to (London), it will be 20 degrees and sunny". If I don't go, what will the weather be?

That's the very point of the saying.

The temptation is to count your eggs as if they were full grown chickens already sold to market, and … to daydream about the income you would get from said sold chickens.

Here in the UK, due to EU subsidised imports Ironically the UK tax payer pays the subsidies) if you hatched chickens and paid for the costs of the food (Usually corn) and sold the hens at market value, you will have maee a substantial loss. While I don't know if it is with chickens specifically, per hen we have owned (Or currently duck, even as chicks we would lose out to sell them or even fatten them up to sell due to the retail prices of ready to cook frozen birds.

Yes, but you only count the eggs. It should be 'Don't count your eggs as chickens until they're hatched.' Otherwise it's using the wrong meaning of the two similar meanings of the word count. 1)count as in 123. 2)count as in to count one thing as something else.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

How do you think we form habits? You can’t just make a change once. Things change when we change, repeatedly, every day.

The second point you are making is pure nonsense. You are not using two distinct meanings of the word "count". If you count your eggs now to make sure you have a hundred eggs, and then you count them weeks later and find that 80 hatched, the entity you are counting has morphed (from eggs to chicks). But the act of counting (and therefore your usage of the word "count" to denote that same activity) is exactly the same.



About your first point: I think that you're just playing dumb to troll me. You know full well that your long winded version:"dont count your eggs as chickens before they hatch" adds nothing but wasted time and verbiage to the obvious meaning of the pithy "don't count your chickens before they hatch".

You "form a habit" because you ..LIKE the results of something that you did, ergo ...you continue to do the same thing in order to get that same result.(ie floss your teeth everyday- to get a thumbs up from your dentist).

That is the diametric opposite of the saying you're complaining about.

IF you do something and do NOT like the result, but you keep doing that same thing ANYWAY, (because you think you might get a different result form doing the same thing) then maybe that thing you are dong just aint workin', and you should try doing something else to get that other result. Or that's the idea of the saying.

You're accusing me of playing dumb and trolling you just because I disagree with YOUR disagreement with MY post.

By long winded you mean you didn't understand it.

Simple explanation for naturalplastic (yes I'm surprised he needs it too but he clearly does)

YOU COUNT EGGS, even if you think they will turn into chickens you count eggs.

If it means 'don't count your chickens AS eggs until they're hatched' which is the meaning of the phrase then the phrase should be DON'T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS AS EGGS UNTIL THEY'RE HATCHED.

"Don't count your chickens as eggs until they're hatched" makes no sense at all. Natural Plastic is right on this one. Probably helps that he appears to be familiar with farms as am I.

Don't count your chickens until they are hatched, means exactly what it says. If I have 8 eggs, they are not all going to hatch, some may be infertile, the fox might get some, etc., etc. And how every many hatch, will not necessarily all grow to adulthood.

So, the words themselves make sense just as they are. From those words, a parable can be drawn, meaning roughly not counting on dreams until they are real.

Yes fine I put it the wrong way round in the last post because I rushed because I was angry at being wrongly accused of trolling. I meant 'don't count your eggs as chickens before their hatched' as I put it in my second post above.

Yes obviously only people familiar with farming like you and np are able to tell the dif between a chicken and an egg.

I don't know why everyone is repeatedly explaining the meaning. I know the meaning. My point was that the saying doesn't match it because of the other use of the word count.

Don't bother I'm unsubscribing to the thread.

Dude..

(1)the whole point of the saying is that you are SUPPOSED to count them "as eggs" ( and not as the future chickens that they may become), and to warn you to not get carried away with false hopes.

(2) Where else would a chicken "hatch" from, but....from an goddamn egg? Theyre not gonna hatch out of the hatchback of a car. So when you say "before they hatch" the phrase "from an egg" is clearly implied. So you don't need to say nor write "from an egg" (unless the person you're speaking to is almost literally brain dead).

(3) Its a side issue, but an issue that seems to matter to you. And that's that you think that we are talking about two different kinds of "counting". You have failed to explain why it is that you think "determining the number of" eggs you have is a different kind of counting than "determining the number of chickens" you have.

However- you are right that the word "count" can have more than one meaning. If you are able to rely on your new hire show up for work on time most days then, he is a person that you can "count" on ( ie "rely on", "trust"). And that meaning IS a little different from "determining how many of something you have".

But the saying does not say "don't count ON your chickens before they hatch". Though oddly enough you COULD say it that way, and if you did it would convey pretty much the same meaning.