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“Better safe than sorry” means it’s better to take precautions, even if inconvenient or expensive, than to risk a bad situation later. It’s a comparative statement that compares safety to regret. The phrase has been used since the 18th century and is now commonplace, often referring to both physical and legal safety.
The phrase “better safe than sorry” is an idiom in the English language that has a relatively concrete and literal meaning. When someone uses this phrase, they very often point out that it is better to take precautions, even if they are inconvenient or expensive, than to save money or time and risk a bad situation later. The idea of protection against possible dangers or dangers has been abbreviated to this four-word phrase, which has become something of a “say” in English-speaking societies.
In terms of grammar, “better safe than sorry” is a shortened form of the statement: “better safe than sorry”. This is an example of a comparative statement. A comparative statement compares items or ideas. In this case, the idea of taking time to be safe is pitted against the idea of regretting the lack of safety precautions after an accident.
The use of this idiom in the English language also affects other grammatical problems. One of these is the use of the word “that” as opposed to the word “then”. Language experts often refer to this word pair as an example of homophones, where two words are spelled differently, but pronounced the same way. This leads to some confusion about the use of each word: where the word “than” is used for comparative or superlative sentences, the word “then” is used for many references to a chronological order.
Historians of the word have traced the use of ‘better safe than sorry’ to some 18th century writers in the UK Since then, it has become a familiar part of the language, something some people would consider commonplace. A similar example would be the sentence “haste is wasteful”, where the speaker is just pointing out that haste can cause costly mistakes, using an abbreviated version of a whole sentence to express this thought.
In the modern context, the phrase “better safe than sorry” often expresses a combined type of responsibility. With so many legal standards and safeguards in place to protect the citizens of developed governments, a business or other party has many innate responsibilities to take safety precautions. Advice advisers with this phrase are usually referring to both the danger of an accident and bodily harm as well as the more abstract danger of legal and financial liability.
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