Bud

Many of my patients come to the office and ask me to put them on antibiotics early in their illness before it becomes worse. These patients will always say the phrase, "I want to nip it in the butt."

Just to set the record straight, the phrase is, 'nip it in the bud.' This is a horticulture metaphore that indicates that we are trying to stop something that may develop into something else before it has time to blossom.

Nipping something or someone in the 'butt' is more of an animal husbandry metaphore or plastic surgery metaphore.

On second thoughts lets just skip all these metaphores to save time and just get right to the symptoms!