Word.ws English Dictionary

the burnt child dreads the fire

the burnt child dreads the fire is the alternative form of a burnt child dreads the fire.

Meaning of a burnt child dreads the fire

Proverb

a burnt child dreads the fire

  1. (dated) A person harmed by something becomes more cautious about it.
    • The Continental insurance company has instructed its agents not to use Rubber Stamps to affix their signatures to policies, renewals, etc., because “Rubber Stamps are easily duplicated, at small expense, even in the case of fac-similes of signatures, and forgery and fraud are facilitated by their...1886 December 23, “The Week”, in The Chronicle: A Weekly Insurance Journal, volume 38, number 26, page 309

Questions about the burnt child dreads the fire

What is the burnt child dreads the fire the alternative form of?
The burnt child dreads the fire is the alternative form of a burnt child dreads the fire.

Words near the burnt child dreads the fire in the dictionary

  1. the bride at every wedding
  2. the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral
  3. the British are coming
  4. The Brothers
  5. the buck stops here
  6. the burnt child dreads the fire
  7. the burnt child fears the fire
  8. the cake is a lie
  9. the call is coming from inside the house
  10. The Call of South Africa
  11. the camera never lies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the burnt child dreads the fire (page history and authors); a burnt child dreads the fire (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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