Word.ws English Dictionary

learned to walk before one could run

learned to walk before one could run is the simple past and past participle of learn to walk before one can run.

Meaning of learn to walk before one can run

Verb

learn to walk before one can run (third-person singular simple present learns to walk before one can run, present participle learning to walk before one can run, simple past and past participle learned to walk before one could run or learnt to walk before one could run)

  1. (idiomatic) To learn how to perform simple tasks before one can perform a more complicated task.
    • Optimal performances can also be used as platforms for achieving greater things in performance later. You might think of optimal performance as learning to walk before you can run or learning the arias before the whole role or running many ten-kilometer races before you try to run a marathon.1998, Alma Thomas, Power Performance for Singers: Transcending the Barriers, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 29
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see learn, walk, before, run.

Questions about learned to walk before one could run

What is learned to walk before one could run the simple past and past participle of?
Learned to walk before one could run is the simple past and past participle of learn to walk before one can run.

Words near learned to walk before one could run in the dictionary

  1. learned professions
  2. learned societies
  3. learned society
  4. learned the hard way
  5. learned the ropes
  6. learned to walk before one could run
  7. learned treatise
  8. learned treatises
  9. learnedest
  10. learnedism
  11. learnedisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: learned to walk before one could run (page history and authors); learn to walk before one can run (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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Cite this entry: “learned to walk before one could run.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/learned_to_walk_before_one_could_run. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.