sinking ship

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

sinking ship (plural sinking ships)

1. (idiomatic) Something which is doomed; an impending debacle; an ongoing disaster.

   Synonym: lost cause

   • 1910, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter 2, in When a Man Marries:

     He said that […] Bella had been perfectly right to leave him, because he was a sinking ship, and deserved to be turned out penniless into the world.

   • 1920 April, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book II (The Education of a Personage), page 255:

     […] you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified—and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony.

   • 1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC:

     My word, won't it be funny when there's no Tevershall pit working. […] And now the men say it's a sinking ship, and it's time they all got out.

   • 2012 May 30, Haitham Maleh, “Opinion: A Peace Plan in Name Only”, in New York Times, retrieved 1 August 2012:

     [T]he only future for Syria is without the Assad political dynasty. […] The government is a sinking ship.

Derived terms

• like rats from a sinking ship

Translations

something doomed

• Finnish: uppoava laiva
• German: sinkendes Schiff n
• Polish: tonący okręt m
• Russian: то́нущий кора́бль m (tónuščij koráblʹ)
• Scottish Gaelic: tha na h-eòin a' falbh às a' chreig (literally “the birds are leaving the rock”)