🐁 The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese Meaning
Hi everyone. Vick here from MyEnglishTeacher.eu today I’m going to share with you in English idiom.
The English idiom is the second mouse gets the cheese. The second mouse gets the cheese is a bit of a joke idiom.
It talks about, you know those little mouse traps where they put the cheese here and then if the mouse gets the cheese closes down on the mouse and kills it.
🐁 Why Does the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese?
Well when they say the second mouse gets the cheese, that means that if you’ve got two mice and one of them goes for the mouse trap and gets caught in the mouse trap, that means that the other mouse, the other mouse can come around and grab the cheese out of the mouse trap without being harmed.
That’s the literal translation of it, but the actual meaning of it means that don’t rush into something, learn from other people’s mistakes before you do something.
Okay?
It’s a lot of the time it’s used together with the early bird gets the worm.
So somebody might say the early bird gets the worm, meaning that you should act fast and then somebody can reply by saying yes, but the second mouse gets the cheese, meaning that you should act fast.
Yes, true.
But it’s also good to learn from other people’s mistakes and think first before you take an action. Okay, so that’s the second mouse gets the cheese.
Can you think of any other English idioms that use animals?
Leave it in the comment section below.
🐁 The second mouse gets the cheese origin
The second mouse gets the cheese is a modern saying. There is no exact origin, but it is believed the saying was coined in the 1990s.
The second mouse gets the cheese is connected to the saying “the early bird get the worm.”
- The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
This version of the saying has appeared in various newspapers, and across the early internet in the 1990s. To this day the concrete origin of the saying remains unknown. People are speculating where it might have come from.
🐁 The second mouse gets the cheese examples
The second mouse gets the cheese means that it is sometimes best to take a risk once you’ve seen someone do it before. The saying is about cheese that is in a mousetrap. If the first mouse gets caught in the trap, the second one will be able to get the cheese because the trap doesn’t work anymore.
- Garry really wanted to run that project, but he failed. Then Josh swooped in, took over, and now he’s running it. You know what they say, the second mouse gets the cheese.
👉 30 Most Common English Proverbs with Food: https://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/…
🔔 Subscribe for more free YouTube tips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm8O…
🔔Subscribe to my personal channel – Anastasia Koltai https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLkp…
🚀 Tools and services I recommend: MyEnglishTeacher.eu – Learn English with Native teachers https://www.myenglishteacher.eu/plans…
Hello there, Yes you are right the 2nd mouse expression is from the mid-90s. I spontaneously retorqued it to a friend teasing me with the early bird saying for being often late at work, me not necessarily involving all you gave as interpretation, which after all I like.
Initially, I meant to say that not everybody needs to be early, to do à good job. The expression of the 2nd mouse came from a real situation at my previous house, a very old house by the way. There were some mice in the cellar and l tried to trap them. Every time I caught a mouse, I noticed that the cheese was gone and concluded that another mouse got the cheese.
I finally managed to catch all mice before they reproduce more by using 7 traps rather than one
Nice!