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“Don’t count chickens before they hatch” means not to assume you have something before you actually do. It comes from an ancient fable by Aesop about a milkmaid who spilled her milk while daydreaming.
Don’t count chickens before they hatch is an old adage which means, in general, don’t act like you have something before you actually have it. It can be used to refer to any number of things, from physical objects to events that have not yet occurred.
An example might best illustrate when the phrase would be used. Let’s say a person applies for a job, with a well-paying salary, and finds out they’ve been hired. They immediately go out and buy a new car, even if they don’t currently have the money to afford the monthly payments. They assume that with their new salary they will be able to afford it. At this point, it might be appropriate to tell them, “Don’t count the chickens before they hatch.” This is because they don’t actually have the money; they rely on something that hasn’t happened yet.
The adage comes from an ancient fable, usually attributed to Aesop. Aesop was a Greek slave who wrote a huge body of fables, each meant to illustrate a single point, and often ending with a one-line adage like Don’t count the hens before they hatch. He lived in the sixth century BC and hundreds of fables have been attributed to him, although it is not certain how many were actually written by him.
The fable from which the moral is derived is simple, usually only a few lines long. The general story is as follows:
A young milkmaid was walking towards the village, carrying a pail of milk on her head to sell at the market. As she walked she started thinking about what she would do with the money she had earned by selling the milk. “I’ll buy some hens from Theonia,” she thought, “and when they lay eggs every day I’ll sell them to Liates. With that money I will be able to buy the most beautiful clothes, and when I go to the market the boys will all look at me with affection. Cassandra will be jealous, but I don’t care, and when she looks at me I’ll butt my head like this.’ And she threw her hair back, spilling the milk on the floor. She came home and told her mother what had happened, and her mother replied, “Ah, my child. Don’t say cat if you don’t have it in the bag.”
The fable first appeared in English in the late 16th century, in the form: “My chickings are not hacht I nil to counte of him as yet”, and not long after as something a little closer to ours, like “I would not make him count the chickens so early before they hatch”.
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