Meaning of broken reed | Babel Free

Definitions

Something or someone very fragile or unreliable.

idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him.”

“Many of the big estates survived. Nor was the peasantry a broken reed in terms of demand for manufactured products.”

“A law on privacy would be cumbersome and hard to police, but as the Press Complaints Commission is a broken reed in this matter, each scandal makes it harder to stave off calls for legislation.”

CEFR level