broken reed

Idioms  

1. A weak or unreliable support, as in I'd counted on her to help, but she turned out to be a broken reed. The idea behind this idiom, first recorded about 1593, was already present in a mid-15th-century translation of a Latin tract, “Trust not nor lean not upon a windy reed.”

---

Example Sentences

As Chernow writes, the Massachusetts congressman Ben Butler, a Radical Republican, “wondered privately whether Grant can be trusted to disobey positive orders of his chief? When the hour of peril comes, shall we not be leaning on a broken reed?”

From The New Yorker

This would perhaps have been an injustice given the ease with which Wilfred Zaha tumbled like broken reed under Raheem Sterling’s challenge.

From The Guardian

It is conceivable that if Wyeth were still alive and painting, he would be drawn to this new-old landscape to capture the stark beauty of a broken reed or the isolation of the Webb farmhouse and its sugar maple.

From Washington Post

But we soon found that we were trusting to a broken reed, so far as his knowledge as a guide was concerned.

From Project Gutenberg

Pioneer Medical Mission work in Kerman—Waiting for drugs and instruments—Native assistant proves a broken reed—First operation in Kerman—An anxious moment—Success—Doctrine of “savab” convenient to the Moslem—Fanaticism tempered with prudence—Opium slaves—Persian therapeutics—Persian quacks and their methods—Sure way of curing cancer—Hysteria.

From Project Gutenberg