bull in a china shop

1. An extremely clumsy person, as in Her living room, with its delicate furniture and knickknacks, made him feel like a bull in a china shop. The precise origin for this term has been lost; it was first recorded in Frederick Marryat's novel, Jacob Faithful (1834).

Example Sentences

Gen. Rob Bonta called Musk a “bull in a china shop,” and said Trump’s unilateral appointment of him to a “made up” but extremely powerful post was a “clear and dangerous effort to bypass the nomination and confirmation process required under the Constitution.”

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“He’s a bull in a China shop,” McCoy said.

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One longtime NFL figure familiar with Bieniemy, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he came across “like a bull in a china shop; he’s almost honest to a fault, too.”

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Germany’s unpopular government came in for lampooning, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz portrayed as a sloth and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as an elephant in a porcelain shop, the German equivalent of a bull in a china shop.

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Ms Shelley described him as "like a bull in a china shop - once he gets moving, nothing's going to stop him".

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