Meaning of tar with the same brush | Babel Free

Definitions

To characterize (someone or something) using the same undesirable attribute, especially unjustly.

figuratively, transitive

Equivalents

Examples

“The C Party have tarred themselves with the same brush as the B Party.”

“The merchants of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham, were tarred, one and all, with the same brush.”

“We may mark that gentleman with black, at all events, said Leandro Perez. We may indeed, replied the Devil; and you may tar his nearest neighbour with the same brush, while you are about it—an original of an auditor, who, because he keeps a carriage, blushes whenever he is obliged to put his foot into a public vehicle.”

“They are both tarred with a dirty brush, and I can't have the Fellowships tarred with the same brush.”

“Were you tarred with the same brush as those canting snobs who doomed a poor old man to a living death?”

“Susan still persisted in thinking that poets and tramps were tarred with the same brush— […]”

“Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush. Wiping pens in their stockings.”

“I'd say Marvin is still eating his heart out over what happened. You work for Sanders Aero and so that tars you with the same brush.”

“There are marked differences between them, and it is terribly important that we as a country not tar all of these people with the same brush. They are very, very much different kinds of countries.”

“And few would distinguish between state and federal public servants, tarring them with the same brush of disdain.”

“[Samuel Taylor] Coleridge's third allegation emphasizes the idea of tarring with the same brush: [Francis] Jeffrey, he alleges, is guilty of lumping Coleridge with his friends as well as the dramatist Joanna Baillie: […]”

CEFR level