bottom of the barrel

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]

Example Sentences

The bottom of the barrel has not yet been reached, warned Mr Lodewijks.

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After spending two seasons scraping the bottom of the barrel, Carrie has turned her newfound status as just any average woman into a horrific stab at autofiction with her new novel, set in 1846 New York City, where she writes thinly veiled musings about her life.

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

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Instead, he’s struck out 41 times and hits a whopping .153, comfortably bottom of the barrel in the Dodgers lineup.

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Brand, however, represents a disturbing twist to this saga: the willingness, in the era of Donald Trump, of right-wing Christians to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel to get this validation.

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Related Words

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