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out of the woodwork



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Idioms and Phrases

Emerging from obscurity or a place of seclusion. It often is put as come (or crawl) out of the woodwork , as in The candidates for this job were coming out of the woodwork . The expression alludes to insects crawling out of the interior wooden fittings of a house, such as baseboards and moldings. [ Colloquial ; mid-1900s]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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out of the woodsout of thin air