put the cart before the horse
Definition
› to do things in the wrong order: Aren't you putting the cart before the horse by deciding what to wear for the wedding before you've even been invited to it?Planning, expecting and arrangingPlotting and trapping
(Definition of put the cart before the horse from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
© Cambridge University Press)
Browse related topics
You are looking at an entry to do with Planning, expecting and arranging, but you might be interested in these topics from the Using the mind topic area:
- Analysing and evaluating
- Aware
- Believable
- Believing
- Changing your mind
- Concluding and deducing
- Continually thinking about
- Decisions and deciding
- Deep in thought
- Difficult to understand
- Dreaming
- Easy to understand
- Empathy and sensitivity
- Experienced
- Experts and specialists
- Expressing and asking opinions
- Forgetting and forgetfulness
- Guesses and assumptions
- Guessing, supposing and suspecting
- Ideas, concepts and theories
- Imagining and conceiving
- Inability and awkwardness
- Inexperienced (of people)
- Inexperienced people and lack of experience
- Inspiration and inspiring
- Intelligence
- Intelligent people
- Judgments and analyses
- Knowledge and awareness
- Logic and reason
- Memory and memories
- Mind and personality
- Misunderstanding
- Not believable
- Not believing
- Not expected or planned
- Opinions, beliefs and points of view
- People who analyse and judge
- People who make predictions
- Philosophy
- Plans and arrangements
- Predicting things and intuition
- Remembering, reminding and reminders
- Skill, talent and ability
- Skilled, talented and able
- Solving and solutions
- Stupid and silly
- Stupid and silly behaviour
- Stupid and silly people
- Testing, checking and experimenting
- Thinking and contemplating
- Trusting and not trusting
- Unaware
- Understanding and comprehending
- Wise and sensible
Browse the Dictionary
-
put sth/sb in a pigeonhole idiom
-
put sth/sb on the map idiom
-
put sth/sb up phrasal verb
-
put stock in sth idiom
-
put the boot in idiom
- put the cart before the horse idiom
-
put the fear of God into you idiom
-
put the finishing touches to idiom
-
put the flags out! idiom
-
put the heat on sb idiom
-
put the lid on sth idiom
Browse the Thesaurus
SMART Thesaurus
Synonyms and related words:
- accidentally on purpose idiom
- advisedly adverb
- aim at sth phrasal verb
- aim sth at sb phrasal verb
- allow for sth phrasal verb
- cue noun (SIGNAL)
- expectant adjective (THINKING)
- foretaste noun
- forethought noun
- formulate verb
- hatch verb (PLAN)
- have something in mind idiom
- have sth up your sleeve idiom
- pre-empt verb
- prearranged adjective
- predetermine verb
- premeditated adjective
- preordain verb
- prognosis noun
- summon verb (ORDER)
Our dictionaries
Word of the Day
Blog
Read our blog about how the English language behaves.
New Words
Find words and meanings that have just started to be used in English, and let us know what you think of them.
