Tek time get deh teday; mek haste get deh tomarra.

Traditional Jamaican proverb · taught in Kingston

Written in Cassidy-JLU

Tek taim get de tide; mek hies get de tumaro.

Word for word

Take your time and you arrive today; make haste and you arrive tomorrow.

What it actually means

Rushing costs you time — careful work gets there first.

How it is built

two-clause antithetic parallelism, imperative frame

Both halves run the same shape — verb, then get deh, then the day — so only the first and last words change. Neither half is really an order; they are two outcomes set side by side.

Where it comes up

This one is taught in Kingston.

More proverbs

Empty barrel mek di mos' noise.The loudest talkers usually know the least.

New broom sweep clean, but ole broom know every corna.New people and things impress, but experience knows the hidden spots.

Di higher monkey climb, di more im expose.The more you rise or show off, the more your flaws are on display.

Licky-licky fly follow coffin go a hole.Appetite followed too far takes you somewhere you never meant to go.

Sources

Frederic G. Cassidy, Jamaica Talk: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica (1961), p. 142 [fieldwork 1952–59]
Recorded here in the entry for tek time, which Cassidy glosses as go slowly, be careful. He gives the proverb as 'Tek time, get deh teday; mek-has'e, get deh tomorrow.'
Peter Unseth, Proverb Studies: A Practical Manual (2025, version 1.0), p. 119 [CC BY-NC]
The grammatical categories this description uses — clause type, mood, and the sound patterning noted where it carries the proverb — follow Unseth's framework for describing a proverb rather than only translating it.

The proverb is folk material. The description of how it is put together follows the framework in the work above; the translation and the commentary are mine.

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