Err on the side of caution

Posted by RRC on May 13, 2008 at 23:05

In Reply to: Err on the side of caution posted by Joy Ames on May 13, 2008 at 11:24:

: Who coined the phrase. "Err on the side of caution"?

"Err on the side of" is a pattern with a great many possibilities. There are a great many things that can and do replace caution. In Google News Archive, a collection of newspapers, the earliest hit on "err on the side of caution" is 1867, but the oldest hit in that archive for the pattern is an 1832 hit from the Times (London) for "err on the side of delicacy".