tie oneself in knots

Meaning: (idiomatic)Toputoneself in adifficultsituation.2018December 6,Shaun Walker, “Trump's European diplomats tied in knots over rise of populism”, inThe Guardian‎[1]:Across the border in the Netherlands, there was further controversy when the new US ambassador,Peter Hoekstra,tied himself in knotsby claiming he had never spoken about Muslim no-go zones in Europe, an obsession for the far-right, when he had.; (idiomatic)To becomeanxiousorupset; tofret.2023June 1, Stuart Heritage, “Acting, sexiness and late babies: why Pacino v De Niro is the daddy of all rivalries”, inThe Guardian‎[2]:The two greatest actors of their generation – the two greatest actors of most generations –[Al]Pacinoand[Robert]De Nirowill spend the rest of eternity being compared. People willtie themselves up in knotsover who did the best work, who was the best in The Godfather Part II, who won their first scene together in Heat, who was the least bad in Righteous Kill.

Examples:

No examples available.

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 ).