油断大敵 yudantaiteki Carelessness is one's greatest enemy

油断大敵 warns against the relaxed guard. 油断 is letting your guard down, taking a thing too lightly and ceasing to watch it, and 大敵 is a formidable foe. The proverb's force is that it treats a lapse inside you as an enemy outside you. It suits any place where one careless moment costs.

The proverb is Japanese: the 甲陽軍鑑, a military chronicle compiled by 1621, already cites its older form, carelessness is a strong enemy, as a saying everyone knew; the 毛吹草, the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period, compiled in 1638, lists it with a verb, carelessness becomes a strong enemy; and the dictionary's earliest example of the form with 大, a great enemy, is a puppet play of 1668.

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