Better late than never_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Better late than never

Sometimes a Chinese idiom and an English expression match each other.

For instance, this reader question - what is 亡羊补牢 in English? - has a dovetail answer in the English proverb "better late than never".

亡羊补牢is a hackneyed expression (that is, a cliché, something old and toothless because of overuse, in other words boring), you might say, but even that quality fits the description perfectly with "better late than ever" (which, too, should be preserved for situations where you really do not have anything original, or better, to say).

Anyways, 亡羊补牢, a tale that dates two millenniums, tells of a herdsman and his helpful neighbor. One morning, as it were, the herdsman found that he had lost a lamb. Upon inspection, a neighbor noticed that there was a gaping hole in the fence that the sheep herder had erected to huddle the sheep for the night with. The neighbor advised him therefore to mend the hole because it was big enough for a wolf to squeeze in at nighttime and prey on the flock, which they concluded was exactly what had happened the previous night. The herder, however, refused the neighbor's good advice saying in riposte: "What's the point of mending the fences when already the lamb has been lost and will not come back?"

"Well, up to you," said the neighbor who then made his retreat and went on to mind his own businesses.

Sure enough, the next morning the herder found another lamb missing, apparently the result from the same gaping hole in the fence. This time, promptly and without further ado, the sheep herder fixed the hole in the fence….