on thin ice

1. In a precarious or risky position, as in After failing the midterm, he was on thin ice with his math teacher. This metaphor is often rounded out as skate on thin ice, as in He knew he was skating on thin ice when he took his rent money with him to the racetrack. This idiom, which alludes to the danger that treading on thin ice will cause it to break, was first used figuratively by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Prudence (1841): “In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”

Example Sentences

It’s also important, with both Bondi and Patel, to emphasize that they were already on thin ice with the right for having not yet released proof that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking minors to every top Democrat in the country.

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But the source of their feud — the bill — remains on thin ice.

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He also played the piano on a session on 8 December, 1980, while working on Yoko Ono's song Walking On Thin Ice.

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"Manchester United will probably go above Spurs. A difficult moment for them and the manager is skating on thin ice."

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Cannon is on “thin ice,” legal experts Norm Eisen, Danya Perry and Josh Colb wrote in a CNN op-ed.

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Related Words

• dangerous 
• delicate 
• dicey 
• hazardous 
• insecure 
• perilous 
• problematic 
• risky 
• rocky 
• shaky 
• slippery 
• ticklish 
• touchy 
• uncertain 
• unhealthy 
• unreliable 
• unsettled 
• unstable 
• unsteady