Phrase Origins: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

I can remember that when I was young, it was in a Mickey Mouse cartoon that I heard "a stitch in time save nine." I think he may have been doing something like sewing a giant to the ground. There were also people or other characters all around him.

My mind did not related the phrase "a stitch in time saves nine" to stitches in sewing, but that the stitch saved nine of the people. This never made sense to me and I always tried to figure out of that's what the phrase meant or if it meant it saved nine of something else.

My mind should have stayed with the sewing. The phrase is "a stitch in time saves nine," but it is implied that the the full phrase is "a stitch in time saves nine stitches."

This phrase is one that has to do with the Anglo-Saxon work ethic. This is one of many proverbs that say doing something immediately is better than waiting.

The first known written record is in the 1732 work Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British by Thomas Fuller. It says, "A Stitch in Time May save nine."

The phrase can be taken very literally. By sewing one stitch to close a hole, you will not have to sew nine stitches later to close what would become an even bigger hole.

However, even though there is this literal meaning, the phrase tends to mean a timely effort will prevent more work later.

Fuller's explanation of the phrase being "a stitch in time saves nine," is that people like the rhythm of the words and the "false rhyme" in them time and nine very nearly rhyme, so the phrase is pleasant to say.

The more confident version of the saying appears in Journal by the astronomer Francis Baily and was published in 1856 by Augustus De Morgan.

It says, "After a little while we acquired a method of keeping her

Source:
Martin, Gary. "A stitch in time saves nine". The Phrase Finder. June 9, 2010 http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-stitch-in-time.html>.