bottom of the barrel

Idioms  

1. The least desirable, the dregs, as in The nominating committee had trouble finding candidates; they were settling for the bottom of the barrel. The phrase often occurs in scrape the bottom of the barrel, meaning “to use the least desirable elements” (because one has no choice), as in Bringing up that minor legal point proves that you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. This metaphor for the sediment left by wine in a barrel was already used by Cicero to describe the lowest elements of Roman society. [First half of 1900s]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bottom of the barrel

Nygren is a value-stock investor, but that does not mean he scrapes the bottom of the barrel for the cheapest stocks.

From MarketWatch ● Feb. 5, 2026

“No one else would deal with them. Literally, I was not bottom of the barrel, darling — I was underneath the barrel. It was desperation.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2025

The horror space does not necessarily demand ingenuity; there’s an audience for even the worst drivel at the bottom of the barrel.

From Salon ● Feb. 26, 2025

“You can be quite certain that at the bottom of the barrel of that supply chain, someone is making next to nothing,” Gutfreund says.

From National Geographic ● Feb. 5, 2024

I wheeled him up an hour later, used my pocketknife to cut holes in the bottom of the barrel for drainage, and built up a fine sweat shoveling in dirt.

From "Seedfolks" by Paul Fleischman

Related Words

• immature
• incomplete
• inexact
• rudimentary
• sketchy
• warped