You need to put your ducks in one basket

Posted: September 13, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This one was overheard at a business meeting.  It is a nice conflation of “get your ducks in a row” (get well-organized) and “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” (don’t risk everything on one venture).  Idioms containing the words eggs, ducks, or baskets seem to get commonly jumbled.  Type any one of these words in the search and you will find many postings on the subjects.  A big thanks to John Hatfield III for hearing this one and sending it in.

I can’t put all my chickens in one basket

Posted: April 11, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?  Seems like a difficult question given the amount of malaphors posted on this site involving barnyard animals and their offspring ( e.g., all your eggs lined up, too many eggs spoil the soup, and don’t count your chickens before they come home to roost, to name just a few).  This beauty is a mash up of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” (don’t make everything dependent on one thing) and “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” (don’t expect something before it happens).  The speaker may have also been hungry and thinking of a chicken basket.  Yum.  Chicken in a basket used to be a pub favorite in England.   Thanks to Jody Compton for hearing this one uttered by the wonderful actress Lara Hayhurst Compton!