"For want of a nail" is a proverb, having numerous variations over several centuries, reminding that seemingly unimportant acts or omissions can have grave and unforeseen consequences through a domino effect.
Poet George Herbert included it in a 1640 collection of aphorisms as "For want of a naile the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost." Benjamin Franklin, in his 1758 Poor Richard's Almanack, recorded a longer version:
History
The proverb is found in a number of forms.
Predecessors include the following:
- Middle High German (positively formulated): ("The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe a horse, a horse a man, a man a castle, that can fight.")
- ("For sparing a little cost often a man has lost the large coat for the hood.")
- Middle French: (Modern French: ; English: "By just one nail one loses a good horse.") (c 1507 Jean Molinet, Faictz Dictz D., v768).
- "The French-men haue a military prouerbe; 'The losse of a nayle, the losse of an army'. The want of a nayle looseth the shooe, the losse of shooe troubles the horse, the horse indangereth the rider, the rider breaking his ranke molests the company, so farre as to hazard the whole Army". (1629 Thomas Adams (clergyman), "The Works of Thomas Adams: The Sum of His Sermons, Meditations, And Other Divine And Moral Discourses", p. 714")
Further reading
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, June 1758, The Complete Poor Richards Almanacks, facsimile ed., vol. 2, pp. 375, 377
- Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ed. Iona and Peter Opie, Oxford 1951, p. 324
References