20 Aug 2019, 2:08 pm
fluffysaurus wrote:
blazingstar wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
'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.
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.
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.
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 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'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.
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.
20 Aug 2019, 5:59 pm
20 Aug 2019, 6:05 pm
20 Aug 2019, 6:14 pm
The irony is that today most folks just say "don't count your chickens!".
They don't even bother with saying the "before they hatch" part (because that's clearly implied because the expression is so familiar to most).
So the "from eggs" part is now DOUBLY unnecessary.
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