jackstraws
Britishnoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The Colony Fire specifically is burning in a really bad spot … where these trees are like jackstraws and it’s difficult to put fire personnel into some of these areas because of that,” he said.
From Seattle Times • Sep. 15, 2021
He took on Soviet cinema’s senior figure Sergei Eisenstein, likening Eisenstein’s 1925 film “Strike” to “theater for fools”; Eisenstein in turn dismissed Vertov’s “formalist jackstraws and unmotivated camera mischief.”
From New York Times • Apr. 10, 2011
"Europe was a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws," writes Author Tuchman; "one could not be pulled out without moving the others."
From Time Magazine Archive
Each of two typical American houses, one brick, one wood, was a pile of rubble and jackstraws.
From Time Magazine Archive
It was a little bit like playing jackstraws, where you toss all the straws down in a pile and then try to take one away without disturbing the others.
From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep
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.
