Meaning of the Devil take the hindmost | Babel Free

Definitions

Phrase. [C2]

Examples

“Completely unknown territory lay outside; puzzling, impossible networks of Underground trains and moving staircases; buses that jerked to a stop and barely gave you time to get on before speeding away. No time to ask questions; no time to ask for answers to be repeated; it was all quick and go and don’t come again. London’s for the thrusting and the Devil take the hindmost.”

““We’ll trot to the gate, side by side, and then we’ll race straight down the road, and the Devil take the hindmost,” shouted the Grand Vizier as fiercely as he could to his laughing partner.”

“As his second-in-command cantered away, Johnson looked back down the column, thinking of the boy and the men he’d dispatched to look for him. And the Devil take the hindmost, he thought bleakly.”

“"Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."”

“‘Abandon them to their fate, you say?’ He looked over at his first mate, at the lines of experience etched into his face, and knew that he was right. ‘Run before the storm and the devil take the hindmost.’ He’d lived by that rule since he’d sailed from the Port of London on that bitter winter night long ago. It had saved his life many a time since, and yet …”

“And if fate should turn her back on them, or turn away from them, leaving them to their own devices, and should they find themselves be sore afraid, then they would simply sail away to the other side of the world. They would ride like the wind. They would sail once more into the breach and damn the torpedos! God save the Queen! And the devil take the hindmost!”

CEFR level