"when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras" meaning in English

See when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Etymology: Coined by American medical researcher (1914-2005) Theodore Woodward. Etymology templates: {{coinage|en|Q7782111|nobycat=1}} Coined by American medical researcher (1914-2005) Theodore Woodward Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras, {{en-proverb}} when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras
  1. (medicine, informal) When diagnosing a patient's symptoms, common ailments should be considered as more probable than rare ones. Tags: informal Categories (topical): Medicine Synonyms: horses, not zebras, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras Related terms: Occam's razor
    Sense id: en-when_you_hear_hoofbeats,_think_of_horses,_not_zebras-en-proverb-6102RHtQ Categories (other): English proverbs Topics: medicine, sciences

Download JSON data for when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras meaning in English (1.7kB)

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      "expansion": "Coined by American medical researcher (1914-2005) Theodore Woodward",
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    {
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      "expansion": "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "English proverbs",
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      "glosses": [
        "When diagnosing a patient's symptoms, common ailments should be considered as more probable than rare ones."
      ],
      "id": "en-when_you_hear_hoofbeats,_think_of_horses,_not_zebras-en-proverb-6102RHtQ",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(medicine, informal) When diagnosing a patient's symptoms, common ailments should be considered as more probable than rare ones."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Occam's razor"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "horses, not zebras"
        },
        {
          "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"
        },
        {
          "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
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      "topics": [
        "medicine",
        "sciences"
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    }
  ],
  "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras"
}

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  "etymology_text": "Coined by American medical researcher (1914-2005) Theodore Woodward.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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      "word": "Occam's razor"
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      "glosses": [
        "When diagnosing a patient's symptoms, common ailments should be considered as more probable than rare ones."
      ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(medicine, informal) When diagnosing a patient's symptoms, common ailments should be considered as more probable than rare ones."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "medicine",
        "sciences"
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "horses, not zebras"
    },
    {
      "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"
    },
    {
      "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras"
    }
  ],
  "word": "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.