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Many such phrases started with communities in poor Appalachian settlements and came from their Scots/Irish/Northern English origins, spreading thereafter throughout the language. Seba Smith was born and bread Maine and was the first American Humorist to employ a great deal of "vernacula".

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Putting the cart before the horse was always bad for the horse.

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Mind you we tend to do that now when transporting horses. But it is true, in metaphorical terms it not good for anyone, despite the current tendency to work on the symptoms rather than the cause, to get their logic in such a disgraceful disorder. Certainly this, for one reason or another, allows people not to see the wood for the trees......to quote another aphorism.

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