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Glite Dictionary
to eat one's seed corn

to eat one's seed corn

9.9
Use saved resources now in a way that harms future success
  • idiom
  • Archaic
translation icon : comer la semilla
  • By cutting research funding, the company risks eating its seed corn and harming future innovation.

Examples

  • Don't eat your seed corn by spending all your savings!

  • If a nation spends all its savings now, it's essentially eating its seed corn.

  • The manager warned that using the emergency reserves was like eating one's seed corn.

  • She is eating her seed corn by using her retirement funds.

  • If you spend all your savings now, you will be eating your seed corn and may regret it later.

  • Investing in luxury items instead of your education means you are eating your seed corn.

  • By using all their funds to advertise a single product, the company was eating its seed corn and jeopardizing its future.

Synonyms

to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage
vsto eat one's seed corn
9.9

To give up something very important for a small, quick gain

uses reserved resources meant for future growth rather than handing them away

Antonyms

to invest
715 3.5

To put money, time, or effort into something hoping for a future benefit

to save
644 1.0

Use less of something to avoid waste

How Short-Sighted

to eat one's seed corn
  • Archaic
9.9
to save
644 1.0
to reserve
145 3.1

Surface Forms

eat one's seed corn infinitive
ate one's seed corn past
eaten one's seed corn past participle
eating one's seed corn present participle
eats one's seed corn third person singular

Morphology

eat + one + seed + corn

The phrase is an agricultural metaphor: literally eating one’s seed corn consumes the seeds reserved for future planting, which maps onto the abstract sense of using up resources needed for future growth. However, the specific notion of 'seed corn' as reserved capital and the proverb-like usage may be unfamiliar to a B1 learner, so the meaning is only partly derivable from the constituents and needs some cultural/lexical knowledge.

Etymology

The idiom eat one's seed corn comes from farming: farmers kept seed corn to plant the next year, and if they ate it there would be nothing to grow. So it means 'to use resources meant for the future and risk long-term success'.