ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY Definition & Meaning

Once bitten, twice shy

An injury makes a person wary of its cause.

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Idioms and Phrases

Once hurt, one is doubly cautious in the future, as in He was two days late last time, so she's not hiring him again—once bitten, twice shy . This seemingly old observation, presumably alluding to an animal biting someone, was first recorded in 1894.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

"It's sort of as the saying goes - once bitten, twice shy," she said.

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Its biggest single was a rowdy cover of Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” which peaked at No. 5 in 1989 and drove the group’s album “…Twice Shy” to sales of more than 2 million copies.

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“Once Bitten, Twice Shy” was nominated for best hard rock performance at the Grammy Awards in 1990.

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Certainly, nettles in their natural state do pack a wallop, and most people, once bitten, twice shy, avoid them.

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Once bitten, twice shy, Twitter reacted, mutedly.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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