Word.ws English Dictionary

first catch your hare

first catch your hare proverb: make sure you have a thing before you decide what to do with it.

Proverb

first catch your hare

  1. Make sure you have a thing before you decide what to do with it.
    • Have you never thought of marrying again? […] Mr. Gibson had thought of this advice several times since it was given; but it was a case of "first catch your hare." Where was the "sensible and agreeable woman of thirty or so?"1866, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 9, in Wives and Daughters, London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Origin of first catch your hare

Supposedly from an error in The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse, where "catch" should have read "case" (i.e. remove the skin); however, this is apocryphal.

Questions about first catch your hare

What does first catch your hare mean?
First catch your hare means make sure you have a thing before you decide what to do with it.
What part of speech is first catch your hare?
First catch your hare is a proverb.

Words near first catch your hare in the dictionary

  1. First Bloke
  2. First Blokes
  3. first blood
  4. first call
  5. First Cat
  6. first catch your hare
  7. First Cats
  8. first cause
  9. first causes
  10. first chair
  11. first chairs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first catch your hare (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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