WTF??
No one hase ever been able to explain to me what that means in plain English.
Does anybody know what Ben Franklin meant by that or was he suffering from the aftershocks of a lightning bolt being sent straight down his ass?
If you add a stich to clothing at the right place, you can prevent future unravelling of nine stiches.
Claro?
>> No one hase ever been able to explain to me what that means in plain English
It looks like plain English to me and quite clear at that. Maybe it was their eyes rolling which prevented them from being able to explain.
If something begins to rip, you can give it a few stistches now or many more later when it has ripped much more. The general meaning is that preventive maintenance and tackling problems when they first appear, save a lot of work down the road.
will someone just im’d me and said QUOTE :A stitch in time saves nine… means that is you pinch time (like you pinch your pennies) you will save money. (and time, which is money) You have to remember they were English, breaking away from England but English nonetheless, and the had a money pice called a NinePence.
In essence, it says time is money.
ENDQUOTE.
so the question remaind WTF??
[Moderator Hat ON]
Moving to General Questions, since I dout this’ll foment a debate.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Whoever im’d you doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Ask them to support their claim with some facts (Like proving that the colonies ever had a ninepence coin. I don’t think that denomination existed in England either.)
The earlier explanations on this thread explain the maxim correctly. Think sewing, not saving money.
It means that if you open a wormhole in time to WWII you can save the “whole nine yards” of machine-gun ammo belt for posterity.
Of course, since Ben came up with it, he opened HIS wormhole in the other direction. Of course, he was a very forward-thinking individual.
I think this is a case of confusion caused by badly understood syntax. Too many people who know this saying think that “in time” goes with “A stitch,” by which I mean to say they think the saying is: “A-stitch-in-time saves nine.”
This is where it makes no sense. How can you stitch time?
But if you understand that “in time” means “sooner or later” then you understand the saying to be: “A-stitch in-time saves nine,” which if you ponder for just a moment you will see makes this statement roughly equivalent to “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Hope this helps.
KneadToKnow’s got it. I never knew what this meant, either, and it was totally due to my incorrect assumption that a stitch was being made “in time”, with time being a noun.
I am always surprised when someone misinterprets something which is quite clear. Of course, sometimes that someone is me.
In this case the meaning has always been clear to me. “in time"here has the same meaning as in “just in time” , in time for dinner” etc.
So, “a stitch in time”… in time for what? In time to stop the rip from spreading
A stitch in the fabric of time?!?!? [Attempting to not sound too insulting, but failing] Where did you get the idea that there was a Star-Trekian concept like “the fabric of time” a quarter-millenium ago? Did Ben Franklin run East so fast that he caught up with Captain Kirk and got it from him? Was he playing poker with Data? Or was that really him visiting Captain Janeway in her holodeck recreation of Leonardo’s studio? 
Ahem. Sorry, but my sarcastic streak got the better of me. Better let the dogs out, except it’s still raining. Looks like “Rain before seven; clear by eleven” is referring to eleven tomaorrow morning.
Oh come on, don’t tell me I needed a smiley on that.