come unstuck

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

come unstuck (third-person singular simple present comes unstuck, present participle coming unstuck, simple past came unstuck, past participle come unstuck)

1. (idiomatic, British) To get into trouble, to have an accident or mishap, to go off the rails.
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     “Well, if you must know,” he said, “she's broken the engagement.” This didn't get us any farther. We had assumed as much. You don't go calling people rats if love still lingers. “But it's only an hour or so,” I said, “since I left her outside a hostelry called the ‘Fox and Goose’, and she had just been giving you a rave notice. What came unstuck? What did you do to the girl?”

   • 2003, David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, page 9:

     It is true that when political philosophers have tried to intervene directly in political life, they have usually come unstuck.

Synonyms

• come undone

References

• “come unstuck” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• Macmillan