cart before the horse

Meaning

1. 1phraseidiomfigurative

   Doing things in the wrong order, especially by acting on a result before the thing that should cause it has happened.

   Grammar: Used after put: put the cart before the horse.

   Patterns

   • put the cart before the horse

   Buying furniture before you have a house is putting the cart before the horse.

   Announcing the winners before the contest ended was clearly the cart before the horse.

   Planning the wedding before they have even met is putting the cart before the horse.

Common combinations

put the cart before the horse

We put the cart before the horse by hiring staff before we had customers.

seem to put the cart before the horse

You seem to be putting the cart before the horse with this plan.

cart before the horse approach

A cart before the horse approach often wastes time.

a case of the cart before the horse

Training the team on the product before it was built was a case of the cart before the horse.

Synonyms and how they differ

get ahead of yourself

Get ahead of yourself is gentler and refers to being too hasty, while cart before the horse points to a wrong order of steps.

back to front

Back to front is a plain phrase for something reversed, without the idiom's sense of poor planning.

jump the gun

Jump the gun means to act too early, whereas the cart idiom means doing steps in the wrong sequence.

Opposites

Word family

cart noun

a vehicle pulled by a horse or pushed by hand

horse noun

a large animal used for riding and pulling

carthorse noun

a heavy horse used to pull carts

Commonly confused: cart before the horse or jump the gun?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “cart before the horse”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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