The cautionary idiom, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, warns against the folly of having only one plan, idea, or resource with nothing to fall back on. Eggs are an important source of food, and if you gather them all into one basket and drop that basket, you risk breaking all your eggs, thus the allusion in this expression, dating from the 17th century.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket’ Meaning
To put all your eggs in one basket means to risk losing everything by having only one plan or idea and depending entirely on it for your success. This idiom is most often used as a simple warning: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” which means not to depend on one plan or idea. 1Heacock, Paul. Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. 2Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth M. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Idioms. Ware: Wordsworth, 1995
Sentence Examples
“I know you want to be an actor, but you still need to have a good education. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“I applied to ten different colleges. I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.”
“You probably should invest some of your money in a diversity fund. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“There’s not much chance you can make a living as a YouTuber. Putting all your eggs in one basket, especially one so risky, is a bad idea.”
Similar Idioms
The following idioms are equivalents, or near equivalents to “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
- Don’t bet everything on one throw of the dice
- Don’t bet everything on one horse / [you should] bet on multiple horses
- Hedge your bets
- Spread your risk
The idiom bet the farm is similar, meaning to risk everything on an uncertain idea, investment, etc. It can be used in a similar way as don’t put all your eggs in one basket, e.g. “It seems like a decent idea, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.” This is a way of warning someone not to risk all their resources on one venture.
Origin
This idiom comes from an old proverb, most likely Spanish or Italian, and first found in print during the 17th century. It alludes to gathering all the eggs from your hens into one basket so that if you should drop the basket, you lose all your eggs.
It appears in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1615):
“…to withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there’s more reason to fear than to hope; ’tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.”
It is also found in A Common Place of Italian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases by Giovanni Torriano (1666).
It is similar to an older proverb, originally Latin: “Venture not all in one ship.” Or don’t trust all your goods to one ship.
Mark Twain, in Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) played on the idiom humorously:
Behold, the fool saith, ‘Put not all thy eggs in one basket’—which is but a manner of saying, ‘Scatter your money and your attention’; but the wise man saith, ‘Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.’ 3Heacock, Paul. Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.,4Manser, Martin H., et al. The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Facts On File, 2007.,5Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013
More Egg Idioms