Literal translation
scalded cat, cold water frightens him
Meaning
once bitten, twice shy
Explanation
This proverb describes how a past bad experience, even one painful only in a specific context, makes a person cautious to the point of fearing, afterward, situations that pose no real danger at all. The literal image depicts a cat that, having been burned by hot water, develops such a wariness that it now dreads cold water itself, even though the latter poses objectively no comparable risk: the fear born of the burn spills beyond its original object and contaminates every occurrence of the element that caused it, regardless of its actual temperature. The proverb is used to explain, without necessarily judging it harshly, the behaviour of someone who has become excessively wary after a failure, a betrayal, or an accident, unable to tell apart situations that remain genuinely risky from those that no longer are. It has an almost literal equivalent in French, evidence of how old and how widely spread this feline image is across European cultures. The register is sententious, used to excuse or explain a caution an outside observer might consider excessive.