Talk:an ounce of prevention is better than an ounce of cure
Latest comment: 6 years ago by Kiwima in topic RFV discussion: August 2017
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— Ungoliant (falai) 12:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- I suspect the creator intended an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and simply got confused. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:17, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- I found one citation at Google News, none at Books, Scholar, and Groups. I put it on the citations page, not in the entry, anticipating its deletion.
- I wonder whether this is more likely to appear in a business context, what with the cost per ounce of cure being about the same as that of prevention. In a business context, the force of the proverb would be that prevention is better than cure (though not 16 times better). DCDuring (talk) 14:14, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- The point of the proverb is exactly that it's better to prevent a problem than to fix it after it's arisen. (It need not be exactly 16 times better.) With this wording (and that of the thread below), the implication would be that fixing a problem and preventing a problem are equally good. The last three citations at Citations:an ounce of prevention is worth an ounce of cure seem to be saying just that, and are deliberately altering the wording of the traditional proverb. As such, I'm not sure I would call this wording a proverb at all. (It's a bit like saying "A stitch in time saves one" instead of "saves nine".) The 1832 citation, on the other hand, seems to be a simple error, and what the author meant is indeed "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- I wonder how an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is expressed in the metric system. DCDuring (talk) 15:45, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- AFAIK in German it's just Vorbeugen ist besser als Heilen (“prevention is better than cure”) or Vorbeugung/Vorbeugen ist die beste Medizin (“prevention is the best medicine”) without any measurements, though at Linguee I've found ad-hoc translations like "ein Pfennig Prävention ist soviel wert wie eine Mark Therapie" (changing it from weight to money). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:23, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- I wonder how an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is expressed in the metric system. DCDuring (talk) 15:45, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- The point of the proverb is exactly that it's better to prevent a problem than to fix it after it's arisen. (It need not be exactly 16 times better.) With this wording (and that of the thread below), the implication would be that fixing a problem and preventing a problem are equally good. The last three citations at Citations:an ounce of prevention is worth an ounce of cure seem to be saying just that, and are deliberately altering the wording of the traditional proverb. As such, I'm not sure I would call this wording a proverb at all. (It's a bit like saying "A stitch in time saves one" instead of "saves nine".) The 1832 citation, on the other hand, seems to be a simple error, and what the author meant is indeed "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
I found and added a second citation. We only need one more now. Kiwima (talk) 20:19, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
I found a third. This is cited Kiwima (talk) 20:46, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2017 (UTC)