come unstuck
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
come unstuck
- (idiomatic, Britain) To get into trouble, to have an accident or mishap, to go off the rails.
- 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:
- “Well, if you must know,” he said, “she's broken the engagement.” This didn't get us any farther. We had assumed as much. You don't go calling people rats if love still lingers. “But it's only an hour or so,” I said, “since I left her outside a hostelry called the ‘Fox and Goose’, and she had just been giving you a rave notice. What came unstuck? What did you do to the girl?”
- David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (page 9)
- It is true that when political philosophers have tried to intervene directly in political life, they have usually come unstuck.
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See also
- come undone
References
- “come unstuck” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
- Macmillan