beggar belief
English
Verb
beggar belief (third-person singular simple present beggars belief, present participle beggaring belief, simple past and past participle beggared belief)
- (intransitive, chiefly UK) To appear implausible or unbelievable.
- Synonym: beggar description
- It beggars belief to suppose that corporate policies can always pursue the best interests of a company.
- 1907, Sidney Lee, Shakespeare and the Modern Stage:
- In Shakespeare's day boys or men took the part of women, and how characters like Lady Macbeth and Desdemona were adequately rendered by youths beggars belief.
- 2021 November 17, “Network News: Anger at delegates' preferential treatment for Glasgow smartcards”, in RAIL, number 944, page 13:
- "It beggars belief that delegates are given smartcards for free travel around the city, yet ordinary Glaswegians will still be forced to use a disjointed ticketing system."
- 2022 September 23, As Putin goes for broke: What next after Ukraine annexation referendums? • FRANCE 24 English, France 24, archived from the original on 27 September 2022, spoken by François Picard, 0:07 from the start:
- […] We'll ask about turnout numbers that already beggar belief and what happens after Vladimir Putin's Friday address scheduled before a joint session of the Russian parliament.
Translations
Translations
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Further reading
- “beggar belief”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
- “beggar belief”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “beggar belief description” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “beggar belief description” (US) / “beggar belief description” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
- “beggar description belief” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
- “beggar belief beggar description”, in Collins English Dictionary.