"das Kind fällt in den Brunnen" meaning in German

See das Kind fällt in den Brunnen in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: Literally, "the child falls into the well". From a now unused proverb where the farmer only sets out to cover his well when a child (or a calf, or the like) has already drowned in it. Head templates: {{head|de|phrase}} das Kind fällt in den Brunnen
  1. (idiomatic) a disaster happens or becomes inevitable; it is too late for precautions that should have been taken earlier Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-das_Kind_fällt_in_den_Brunnen-de-phrase-GJbrHuW8

Download JSON data for das Kind fällt in den Brunnen meaning in German (1.4kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, \"the child falls into the well\". From a now unused proverb where the farmer only sets out to cover his well when a child (or a calf, or the like) has already drowned in it.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "de",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "das Kind fällt in den Brunnen",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "German",
  "lang_code": "de",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "english": "(literally, “When the child has fallen into the well,...”)",
          "roman": "When the catastrophe has already occurred, they all claim they knew it all along.",
          "text": "Wenn das Kind in den Brunnen gefallen ist, wollen es alle wieder gleich gewusst haben.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "english": "(literally, “...before the child falls into the well.”)",
          "roman": "We must find solutions before it’s too late.",
          "text": "Wir müssen Lösungen finden, bevor das Kind in den Brunnen fällt.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a disaster happens or becomes inevitable; it is too late for precautions that should have been taken earlier"
      ],
      "id": "en-das_Kind_fällt_in_den_Brunnen-de-phrase-GJbrHuW8",
      "links": [
        [
          "disaster",
          "disaster"
        ],
        [
          "inevitable",
          "inevitable"
        ],
        [
          "precaution",
          "precaution"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) a disaster happens or becomes inevitable; it is too late for precautions that should have been taken earlier"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "das Kind fällt in den Brunnen"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, \"the child falls into the well\". From a now unused proverb where the farmer only sets out to cover his well when a child (or a calf, or the like) has already drowned in it.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "de",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "das Kind fällt in den Brunnen",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "German",
  "lang_code": "de",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "German idioms",
        "German lemmas",
        "German multiword terms",
        "German phrases",
        "German terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "english": "(literally, “When the child has fallen into the well,...”)",
          "roman": "When the catastrophe has already occurred, they all claim they knew it all along.",
          "text": "Wenn das Kind in den Brunnen gefallen ist, wollen es alle wieder gleich gewusst haben.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "english": "(literally, “...before the child falls into the well.”)",
          "roman": "We must find solutions before it’s too late.",
          "text": "Wir müssen Lösungen finden, bevor das Kind in den Brunnen fällt.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "a disaster happens or becomes inevitable; it is too late for precautions that should have been taken earlier"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "disaster",
          "disaster"
        ],
        [
          "inevitable",
          "inevitable"
        ],
        [
          "precaution",
          "precaution"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) a disaster happens or becomes inevitable; it is too late for precautions that should have been taken earlier"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "das Kind fällt in den Brunnen"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable German dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). 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.