Meaning
The person who arrives or acts first secures the advantage, whether a bargain, a seat, or an opportunity. Said to encourage promptness, it is frequently shortened to the noun 'early bird', as in early-bird specials, early-bird check-in, and early-bird tickets. Neutral and proverbial; often shortened to 'early bird' in advertising and commerce. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A proverb with a well-documented paper trail. The earliest verified appearance is in the fifth edition (1636) of William Camden's Remains Concerning Britain, in a list of proverbs as 'The early bird catcheth the worme'; the editor had died in 1623, and the saying is absent from the editions of 1605 and 1623, as Quote Investigator confirmed by examining the scans. The frequently repeated 1605 date is an error introduced by Apperson's 1929 English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, which cited only a later reprint, and it was popularised when H. L. Mencken repeated it in 1942. John Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs (1670) records 'The early bird catcheth the worm' and is often cited as an early record, while Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia (1732) includes it as saying 5118. The American preference for 'gets' over 'catches' is a later variation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be an early bird
- it's the early bird that catches the worm
- the early bird catches the fattest worm
- the early bird gets the worm
Usage Examples
- Arrive at the market by seven; the early bird catches the worm, and the best stalls sell out by nine.
- She booked her flights eleven months ahead, on the principle that the early bird gets the worm.
- The early bird catches the worm in graduate hiring too - the roles advertised in September were filled by October.