break a butterfly upon the wheel

English dictionary entry

Meanings

verb

To inflict a punishment out of all proportion to the offence.
To employ great exertions for insignificant ends.

Pronunciation

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-break a butterfly upon the wheel.wav

Word forms

break a butterfly upon the wheel breaks a butterfly upon the wheel breaking a butterfly upon the wheel broke a butterfly upon the wheel broken a butterfly upon the wheel break a butterfly on a wheel break a butterfly on the wheel break a butterfly upon a wheel break a fly on a wheel break a fly on the wheel break a fly upon a wheel break a fly upon the wheel

Etymology

Coined by English poet Alexander Pope in 1734 in Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot.

Related words

butterfly upon a wheel use a sledgehammer to crack a nut

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.

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