putting the cart before the horse
Sequence entirely inverted
Putting the cart before the horse means doing things in the wrong order—prioritizing what should come second over what should come first.
The image is of a cart positioned ahead of the horse that should pull it, rendering both useless.
Don't put the cart before the horse by buying furniture before you've found an apartment.
The phrase often warns against acting on assumptions before they're confirmed.
- misorderArrange items incorrectly
- wrong orderIncorrect arrangement of elements
- backwardsToward what's behind
- ass backwardsReversed and confused
- misstepError in action or judgment
premature · counting chickens · precedence · inversion · dependency · jumping the gun · illogical · causality · sequence · reversal · error · confusion · missing the point · inefficiency · misalignment · priority · miscalculation · proverbial
- farm idiomsmake hay while the sun shines, cream of the crop, till the cows come home, buy the farm, put out to pasture
- Mangled Idiomsrocket surgery, for all intensive purposes
putting the cart before the horsefirst things first
Begin with essentials
one step at a time · in due course · methodically · systematically