slip through one's fingers
IdiomsExample Sentences
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Being glad to see the Natives there, even with all their belongings, we carefully refrained from finding fault; but the thread of devotion was sometimes apt to slip through one's fingers, especially when the conflict of the owner to silence a baby pig inspired the little wretch to drown everything in a long-sustained and high-pitched scream.
From Project Gutenberg
It’s painful to have fine strong lads like ours slip through one’s fingers.
From Project Gutenberg
We positively must buy this, my dear; for it would be a sin to let such a bargain slip through one's fingers.
From Project Gutenberg
The experience of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that nothing could take it away.
From Project Gutenberg
Those ice ledges, you know, slip through one’s fingers like water.
From Project Gutenberg
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.