Word.ws English Dictionary

puts the cart before the horse

puts the cart before the horse is the third-person singular simple present indicative of put the cart before the horse.

Meaning of put the cart before the horse

Verb

put the cart before the horse (third-person singular simple present puts the cart before the horse, present participle putting the cart before the horse, simple past and past participle put the cart before the horse)

  1. (idiomatic) To put things in the wrong order or with the wrong priorities; to put something inconsequential as more important than something more essential.
    • The hour had struck; and with it, as always, appeared the man. So it has ever been in the history of the world; though we, with characteristic vanity, uniformly put the cart before the horse, and declare that it is the man that brings the hour.1898, Julian Hawthorne, chapter 1, in The History of the United States

Questions about puts the cart before the horse

What is puts the cart before the horse the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Puts the cart before the horse is the third-person singular simple present indicative of put the cart before the horse.

Words near puts the cart before the horse in the dictionary

  1. puts the bite on
  2. puts the boot in
  3. puts the bottom rail on top
  4. puts the brakes on
  5. puts the cabosh on
  6. puts the cart before the horse
  7. puts the case
  8. puts the cat among the pigeons
  9. puts the change on someone
  10. puts the clock back
  11. puts the clock forward

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: puts the cart before the horse (page history and authors); put the cart before the horse (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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