make bricks without straw

Idioms  

1. Perform a task without essential materials or means, as in Writing a report without the current data is making bricks without straw. This expression alludes to straw as a material necessary in early brick manufacturing. [Early 1600s]

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Example Sentences

In the latter, you are often expected to make bricks without straw, but in the former, to grow lemons without a tree.

From Time Magazine Archive

Like the rest of us, newspaper men cannot be expected to make bricks without straw.

From Time Magazine Archive

After all, to build his air force Marshal Milch had to make bricks without straw.

From Time Magazine Archive

Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?"

From Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 07, May 14, 1870 by Various

We have no funds, and we are expected to make bricks without straw!

From Our Vanishing Wild Life Its Extermination and Preservation by Hornaday, William Temple