hiding to nothing

Language: en

Meaning: (idiomatic,British,informal)A situation in which victory has little or no value, but defeat has a huge cost.1915, James Forman Sloan, A. Dick Luckman,Tod Sloan, page245:It would have been madness to encourage them to back the mare : in fact I was ona hiding to nothingwhatever happened.1931,The Atlantic Monthly, Making of America Project, page60:No legitimate excuse for introduction existed, or could exist, and the odds looked likea hiding to nothingshould Bayard attempt to force a meeting […]1989, Dave Graves,A layman's guide to United Kingdom air traffic control, page76:It is a nasty situation and DFR knows that he is on a goodhiding to nothing. He sometimes feels that he is the least understood and most unloved ATCO in [the UK]2003, Robin Birn,The international handbook of market research techniques, page543:This often makes it a nervous,hiding-to-nothinggame in which disasters are so much more memorable than successes2003, Frank L. Clarke with G. W. Dean and Kyle Gaius Oliver,Corporate collapse: accounting, regulatory and ethical failure, page39:Company directors are on ahiding to nothingwhen it comes to trusting their reputations to the accounting statements for which they are responsible.

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