on one's beam ends
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]By analogy with a capsizing ship; see usage note at beam-ends.
Prepositional phrase
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “be on your beam ends”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
- “on one's beam ends”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.