scrape the bottom of the barrel

Meaning: (idiomatic,informal)Tosettlefor a poor optiondue toalackorunavailabilityof anything morefavorable.Synonym:scrape the barrelThey must really have beenscraping the bottom of the barrelif they couldn't find a better design than that.1961October, “Motive Power Miscellany: Western Region”, inTrains Illustrated, page635:The bottom of the barrel was scrapedon August 22 when Shrewsbury had to produce Taunton2-6-0No. 6312 to work the 8.10 p.m. from Paddington between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury; the stranger was in trouble in the early hours of the next morning at Hollinswood, but managed to reach Shrewsbury.2004, Ronald Carey,The War Above the Trees, Trafford Publishing,→ISBN,page259:We have so few ships that are mission—ready, they arescraping the bottom of the barrel. We are to the point where three damaged ships are being stripped to make one flyable ship.

Examples:

EN: I realize in war time they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel but where'd they ever scrape you up?
ES: Ya sé que en tiempos de guerra hay que rascar hasta el fondo del barril... ..pero ¿de donde salió usted?
EN: You propose we scrape the bottom of the barrel for 12 of our worst kids.
ES: ¿Propones que raspemos el fondo del barril por 12 de nuestros peores chicos?
EN: I do feel that if my honourable friend continues to scrape the bottom of the barrel for objections, he is in danger of getting splinters under his fingernails.
ES: Siento que si mi honorable amigo continua raspando el fondo del barril en busca de objeciones, va a acabar con astillas debajo de sus uñas.
ID: Saya merasa bahwa jika teman saya yang terhormat, ...terus mengikis bagian bawah dari tong 'keberatan', ...dia dalam bahaya karena mendapat serpihan di bawah kukunya.
EN: Who'd you scrape the bottom of the barrel and find?
ES: ¿Buscaron al fondo de un barril para encontrar a alguien?
ID: Kalian mengais dan dapat siapa?
EN: Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
ES: Hora del último recurso.
EN: Development Program of the Far East: scrape the bottom of the barrel
HI: सुदूर पूर्व का विकास कार्यक्रमः बैरल के नीचे परिमार्जन
EN: Then he really will have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, in order to invalidate Obama.
HI: इसी लिए वो नखरे करता हुआ किसी न किसी तरह बहाने ढूंढता था देवा के नीचे पीसने के लिए।
EN: Low-end, budget point-and-shoots tend to either scrape the bottom of the barrel in the hardware department, or offer one or two stand-out features while plastering the cheapest parts on the rest of the camera.
TE: తక్కువ-ముగింపు, బడ్జెట్ పాయింట్-అండ్-షెల్స్ హార్డ్వేర్ విభాగంలో బారెల్ దిగువను కొట్టడం లేదా కెమెరాలోని ఇతర భాగాలలో చౌకైన భాగాలను ప్లాస్టరింగ్ చేస్తున్నప్పుడు ఒకటి లేదా రెండు స్టాండ్-అవుట్ ఫీచర్లను అందిస్తాయి.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).