英语词汇put the cart before the horse的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

put the cart before the horse; preposterous. When Cicero said these words in 61 b.c. they were already proverbial. Actu- ally, their Latin version, literally translated, means “the plow draws the ox in reversed position,” but it conveys the same idea, that is, to get things in the reverse order. The Roman proverb was first translated into English in 1279, and over the years the ox became a horse and the plow a cart. The proverb is ancient in French, German, and Italian as well as English. Preposterous conveys a similar idea. It is from the Latin prae, “before,” and posterus, “after,” and freely translated means “the before com- ing after,” which suggests its meaning of “nonsensical or ab- surd.” By the way, sometimes carts were legitimately put before horses, as when horses pushed empty carts into coal mines. American author Heywood Broun liked to tell a joke based on the old proverb: “If a philosopher lectured on Descartes in a bordello what would I say?—I would say the philosopher was putting Descartes before de whores.”

词汇	put the cart before the horse
词源	put the cart before the horse; preposterous. When Cicero said these words in 61 b.c. they were already proverbial. Actu- ally, their Latin version, literally translated, means “the plow draws the ox in reversed position,” but it conveys the same idea, that is, to get things in the reverse order. The Roman proverb was first translated into English in 1279, and over the years the ox became a horse and the plow a cart. The proverb is ancient in French, German, and Italian as well as English. Preposterous conveys a similar idea. It is from the Latin prae, “before,” and posterus, “after,” and freely translated means “the before com- ing after,” which suggests its meaning of “nonsensical or ab- surd.” By the way, sometimes carts were legitimately put before horses, as when horses pushed empty carts into coal mines. American author Heywood Broun liked to tell a joke based on the old proverb: “If a philosopher lectured on Descartes in a bordello what would I say?—I would say the philosopher was putting Descartes before de whores.”
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