Spanishcuentas de la lechera
Meaning: plans or hopes based on fantasy rather than reality; wishful thinking that ignores practical obstacles.
Literally: Accounts of the dairymaid
Example: “Ya está gastando el premio que no ha ganado: son cuentas de la lechera.” — He's already spending prize money he hasn't won: counting his chickens before they hatch.
English equivalent: To count one's chickens before they hatch
Equivalents in other languages
English: Origin: From a story told in Spanish since the Middle Ages. In Don Juan Manuel's El conde Lucanor (1335), a woman called Doña Truhana carries a pot of honey to market, imagines the eggs, hens, sheep and wealth it will buy her, laughs for joy, and drops the pot. La Fontaine turned her into a milkmaid in La Laitière et le Pot au lait (1678), and Félix María de Samaniego's Spanish fable La lechera (1781) made the milkmaid's sums proverbial.
More Spanish idioms
- en la estacada abandoned or left in a difficult situation without help.
- ahogarse en poca agua to panic or overreact to a minor problem.
- morder el polvo to be defeated or to die.
- dale que te pego relentlessly; without stopping or holding back.
- tira y afloja a back-and-forth negotiation or struggle where each side gives and takes.
- como pez en el agua perfectly at ease in a situation; in one's natural element.
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