Meaning of asleep at the switch | Babel Free

Definitions

Neglectful of an important task, responsibility, or opportunity.

idiomatic

Examples

“His vote demonstrates that the people of Philadelphia are not asleep at the switch, are not indifferent to their political duties.”

“My guardian angel had not been asleep at the switch.”

“It is sometimes difficult to guess whether a sentence has been garbled by the author or the typesetter […] . In either case, the editors were asleep at the switch.”

“Why America (but not Canada) failed to set up a needed synfuels industry.”

““We all were asleep at the switch as the Chinese government decided to prioritise these clean energy technologies as a matter of national industrial strategy,” says Geoffrey Pyatt, a former US assistant secretary of energy and diplomat now at the advisory firm McLarty Associates.”

CEFR level