on the shelf

1. Inactive, not employed, as in With mandatory retirement at 65, many useful employees are put on the shelf . [Second half of 1500s]

2. In a state of disuse, as in We'll have to put her proposal on the shelf until we have more funds . [Late 1800s]

3. Without prospects of marriage. For example, After she broke her third engagement, her parents were sure she'd be on the shelf . This usage is always said of a woman and today considered offensive. It is probably obsolescent. [Early 1800s] All these usages allude to an article left on the shelf of a store, bookcase, or the like.

Example Sentences

“Yap! Seems I’ve got a bit of a cold coming on. No cause for alarm. They come and go with me, every four weeks or so. Arf! That is to say, ah-choo! Hand me the almanac, would you, Quinzy? It tends to wander off if I don’t put it right back on the shelf. Why, you’d think the book was cursed, woof!”

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She had put it there herself, at that exact spot on the shelf.

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I also worked in the antiques shop, cleaning and dusting things like the sets of beautiful Russian glasses that sat on the shelf.

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I could have put the book back on the shelf and headed off to the fiction section, but instead I bought the guidebook and a couple more.

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"We found this material on the shelf. We used it and it was amazing. We understood why it was good. Then the cherry on the top -- we knew how to do better, added that special sauce, and we made the world's best material for these applications," Anderson said.

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Related Words

• asleep 
• comatose 
• inert 
• inoperative 
• latent 
• passive 
• sidelined www.thesaurus.com
• sluggish