don’t let the grass grow under your feet

Act with dispatch; don’t delay. This expression dates from the sixteenth century. It appeared in print in 1607 in Edward Topsell’s natural history, Foure-Footed Beasts (“The hare . . . leaps away again, and letteth no grass grow under his feet”).

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don’t know from Adam

See KNOW  FROM ADAM.

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don’t hold your breath

See WITH  BATED  BREATH.

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don’t give/care a rap for

Worthless to me; without any interest. The “rap” in question was a base halfpenny that was worth only half a farthing and was circulating in Ireland in the early eighteenth century because small coins at that time were very scarce. Jonathan Swift described it in Drapier’s Letters (1724): “Copper halfpence or farthings . . . have been for some time very scarce and many counterfeits passed about under the name of raps.” Consequently the name was adopted for anything of little value and was so used by the early nineteenth century. W. H. Ainsworth wrote (Rookwood, 1834), “For the mare-with-three-legs [i.e., the gallows] I care not a rap.”

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don’t cry over spilled milk

See CRYING  OVER  SPILLED  MILK.

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don’t count your chickens before they hatch

Don’t spend or try to profit from something not yet earned. This expression comes from Aesop’s fable about a milkmaid carrying a full pail on her head who daydreams about selling the milk for eggs that will hatch into chickens and make her so rich she will toss her head at offers of marriage; but she prematurely tosses her head and spills the milk. It was, like so many Greek fables, translated into modern European languages and passed on. The expression was in use figuratively by the sixteenth century and appeared in proverb collections soon afterward.

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don’t change/swap horses in midstream

Don’t change methods or leaders in the middle of a crisis. Although originating a quarter of a century earlier, the expression became famous through its use by President Lincoln in 1864 when he learned that his renomination for a second term was being backed by the National Union League. Several versions of his speech were recorded, some having it change and others swap.

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