It means to say or do something sooner that it should be done and as a consequence the proper preparations or explanations for it are not made. Example: "When he decided to buy this house before getting hold of the money, he got ahead of himself ."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."= Don't try to rise above your station [ status] in life or "don't get cocky" Another meaning is "don't celebrate too soon"

Don’t do anything that is not yet ready to be done or more importantly don’t do anything beyond your current ability or position. To act prematurely or to be overly confident or to get carried away ( with excitement for example) Let’s say you are learning how to drive. You can’t wait to get on the road and drive on your own. You need to be patient, finish learning how to drive. You can use it the other way around too, when you say or do something that results in something slightly advanced that does not make complete sense. You can just say…. Oh perhaps I am getting a bit ahead of myself here….. Hope that helps

“Don’t get ahead of yourself” can mean more than one thing. Another meaning not yet mentioned in this thread is to focus on what’s happening now rather than rushing into future plans without a base. Because we won’t know our next steps until we complete the current ones and see what we want to do from there.

It's like saying "don't count on things happening too soon" or "don't count on that being for sure when there is still more work to be done."

• Tiếng Anh (Mỹ)
• Tiếng Filipino Tương đối thành thạo

Not to do or say something sooner without proper preparations.

Student A: I think we're going to fail our Physics subject.

Student B: Hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's focus on our studies and review our lessons well.

I´ve read that that expression means something as: no te adelantes a los acontecimientos and expressions like that, but I´m not sure tht that meaning fits in this context. it doesn´s make sense at all. so, I think it means something utterly different when it´s used in a context like this and I think it means something like:

No te pases Cheryl, No te pases de lista Cheryl.

whaddya think?

Thanks

• 2

The normal meaning is what you said it is. The fan could simply write it wrong and write ahead instead of full.

• 3

The fan is an English native so I doubt that he or she´s wrong

• 4

The use of the phrase seems a bit unusual to me.

I might replace it with "let's not exaggerate" in the sense "don't exaggerate".

M.

• 5

The phrase can be used when referring to a future event or a prediction that is exaggerated. For example, you swim a few laps and then say it would be fun to swim across the English Channel. Here, the phrase can be used to mean "let’s not get cocky with our future claims", "let’s not exaggerate with such claims." The author of the comment quoted above seems to use this phrase in that sense while referring to a past exaggerated claim. As mijoch says, "let's not exaggerate" is a better choice.

Last edited: Jun 12, 2012

• 6

  The fan is an English native so I doubt that he or she´s wrong

Laurajean, we all make mistakes sometimes even in our own language. As stated by others, you caught the meaning exactly. In the context cited, it´s simply the wrong expression. To express what the fan intended to say, I like vmag´s suggestion a lot and I just wanted to expand it a little to give you some phrases:

"Don´t be so full of yourself" "You are so full of yourself, Cheryl" "No need to be so full of yourself, Cheryl."

I don´t think (but hey, I´m ready to be proved wrong ) that you could simply replace the word, i.e. let´s not get full of ourselves Cheryl does not sound like natural English to me.

Mijoch´s phrase is spot on, obviously, in terms of meaning, but I don´t think it captures the same register.

Saludos

• 7

  The fan is an English native so I doubt that he or she´s wrong

Actually, the fan did not use the expression correctly. The Spanish equivalent is "no nos adelantemos" or "no nos anticipemos". In this context, the expression used does not make sense.

• 8

Estoy de acuerdo con gringo. The Spanish equivalent is "no nos adelantemos a los hechos". Una semana es muy poco tiempo; con el tiempo sabrá si puede adjudicarse el crédito o no.