cupboard is bare, the

Idioms  

1. The desired resources are not available, as in The schools are asking for a budget increase but the cupboard is bare. This metaphoric expression may have come from the nursery rhyme: “Old Mother Hubbard, went to the cupboard, to fetch her poor dog a bone, And when she went there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none” (Sarah Catherine Martin, The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, 1805).

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Example Sentences

Having spent months warning that "the cupboard is bare", the party has suddenly discovered that the exchequer does after all possess the ingredients for a £6bn national insurance cut, a major reduction in state revenues which David Cameron claimed on Friday would actually help to finance new cancer drugs.

From The Guardian