Better late than never

Yesterday I suddenly decided that I wanted to know the grammatical explanation for "better late than never."

I am delighted to share my findings with interested members.

One source * said that maybe it is translated from Latin:

"It is better to do something late than to never do it at all."

Another source ** said that the complete sentence is:

"It is better to do well late than it is good to do well never."

A third source *** says that Chaucer (in about the year 1386) may have been the first person to use this saying in

print: "For bet than never is late."

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In my 75 years of life, I had never before thought about this matter. Well, better late than never.

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* Google "Better late than never Wiktionary."
** Google "Better late than never Key to the Questions Contained in Revised English Grammar" and then click on the "books" section.
*** Google "Better late than never The Phrase Finder."

P.S. Professor Quirk calls this expression and similar ones "aphoristic sentences." He gives his views on pages 843 - 844 in the 1985 edition of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.

For what it's worth, exactly the same idiom (that is translated word for word) occurs in the Czech language. Any other languages where this is common?

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Originally Posted by CarloSsS

For what it's worth, exactly the same idiom (that is translated word for word) occurs in the Czech language. Any other languages where this is common?

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The exact same idiom appears in Dutch as well. Beter laat dan nooit. As you can see, the word order is also the same.

"Lepiej późno niż wcale" in Polish and "meglio tardi che mai" in Italian are also the same.

"Melius tarde, quam nunquam" googles. I haven't gone through the links, so I don't know if it's a real thing or just a modern translation.

"Más vale tarde que nunca" in Spanish, also literally "better late than never".

Absolutely the same idiom in Russian - "лучше поздно чем никогда"
Amazingly, how much we have in common in the modern European languages due to Latin.

Could it be older than Latin if it's so widespread?

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Originally Posted by Tdol

Could it be older than Latin if it's so widespread?

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Perhaps, but we still haven't got any proof that it was actually used in Latin. I've been looking through the links on the Google search page, and I've found nothing interesting.

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Originally Posted by birdeen's call

Perhaps, but we still haven't got any proof that it was actually used in Latin. I've been looking through the links on the Google search page, and I've found nothing interesting.

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Professor Jeremiah van Postule claims that the Neanderthal "ъëɟɟē łåēɖ þøƝ ņɚʄʘ" may be an early version of this. If so, it could suggest that the ancestors of the Romans may have acquired this from descendants of the Neanderthals.


Postule, Jeremiah van (1866) ‘Tentative Musings on Neanderthal Aphorisms’ in Gruntfuttock P J (ed.) Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Protophilologists, Berlin: Unsinn Verlag.