Meaning of slings and arrows | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Hardships or adverse circumstances.
   idiomatic, plural, plural-only
2. Harsh criticism or personal attacks.
   idiomatic, plural, plural-only

Equivalents

Examples

“To be, or not to be, that is the queſtion: / VVhether tis nobler in the minde to ſuffer / The ſlings and arrovves of outragious fortune, / Or to take Armes againſt a ſea of troubles, / And by oppoſing, end them, to die to ſleepe / No more, […]”

“Now that we're entering the thick of the holiday travel season and we've been groped, scanned, forced to eat a Cinnabon and otherwise made to suffer the slings and arrows of air travel – here’s something rarely offered of late: a positive story about airports.”

“It seems inevitable that an elite institution in a democratic republic will suffer the slings and arrows of populist discontent. The wonder of it all may be that the institution of lifetime tenure has persisted for so long. Proponents of changing that rule may take satisfaction in humbling the justices ever so slightly, or believe that instituting term limits would forestall more radical change, such as expanding the size of the court.”

“In every role, he [Giancarlo Esposito] mesmerizes audiences with a coiled intensity that he credits to military school, the slings and arrows of a volatile profession, and a lifelong commitment to mindfulness. "My karmic journey is to be told what to do and accept that and do it the best I can,” he said. “I realize one of my strengths is to control the chaos."”

“[…] Mrs. Dareville, without any motives of interest, or good nature of sufficient power to restrain her talent and habit of ridicule, free from hope or fear, gave full scope to all the malice of mockery, and all the insolence of fashion. Her slings and arrows, numerous as they were and outrageous, were directed against such petty objects, and the mischief was so quick, in its aim and its operation, that, felt but not seen, it is scarcely possible to register the hits, or to describe the nature of the wounds.”

“In Massachusetts, the Kennedy family, unafraid of the slings and arrows from lesser breeds, proudly ran its youngest son through a convention gauntlet, and saw him emerge the victor.”

“Exposed to a fellow employee's harassment, one can walk away or tell the offender to "buzz off." A supervisor's slings and arrows, however, are not so easily avoided. An employee who confronts her harassing supervisor risks, for example, receiving an undesirable or unsafe work assignment or an unwanted transfer.”

“[James Britt] Donovan could work in tremendous secrecy at a time when there was no social media. Today it'd be a lot harder to find a man that would stand up for his principles and suffer the slings and arrows of the haters on social media.”

“As Trump said, Musk got a lot of “the slings and the arrows.” His approval rating cratered and violence has been directed toward Tesla, a brand once loved by liberals and in China, which is now tarnished.”

CEFR level