measure twice and cut once
measure twice and cut once proverb: one should double-check one's measurements for accuracy before cutting a piece of wood; otherwise it may be necessary to cut again, wasting time and material.
Proverb
measure twice and cut once
- One should double-check one's measurements for accuracy before cutting a piece of wood; otherwise it may be necessary to cut again, wasting time and material.
- Look at Carpenters! . . . In old times it was a proverb "Measure twice, and cut once."1872, “Dressmaking”, in Hall's Journal of Health, volume 19, number 12, page 280
- Plan and prepare in a careful, thorough manner before taking action.
- Mr. Paz noted that since the onset of the credit crisis, eBay, like other companies, hasn’t been able to "measure twice and cut once."2008 November 9, Hilary Johnson, “Mergers rattle bank relations”, in Financial Week, retrieved 09 Nov 2008
Forms of measure twice and cut once
| alternative form | measure twice, cut once |
|---|---|
| alternative form | check twice and do once |
Questions about measure twice and cut once
- What does measure twice and cut once mean?
- Measure twice and cut once means one should double-check one's measurements for accuracy before cutting a piece of wood; otherwise it may be necessary to cut again, wasting time and material.
- What part of speech is measure twice and cut once?
- Measure twice and cut once is a proverb.
Words near measure twice and cut once in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: measure twice and cut once (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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