This saying often refers to the necessity of making a choice between equally difficult options.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Out of the frying pan into the fire!
From The Irrational Knot Being the Second Novel of His Nonage by Shaw, Bernard
"But what I would say to people is that no matter how difficult it is, please don't use a local moneylender, because it really is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire."
From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2022
For those children it could well be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.
From BBC ● Jan. 8, 2011
As expected, Dan jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, though Karren offered warnings too about Stuart, whose aggressive salesmanship had been one step away from wrestling passers-by to the ground.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 9, 2010
But, all said and done, the nation has fallen out of the frying pan into the fire; exchanged one evil for another.
From Time Magazine Archive
Ay, out of the frying pan into the fire; although I don't know that, either.
From Willy Reilly The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by Carleton, William
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.
