Dictionary

hiding to nothing en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From horse racing, hiding (“beating”); to (“as used to express gambling odds”), e.g., 6 to 1. Literally, the phrase can be described as to bet on a contest whose outcome is at worst a beating, or at best nothing. A heavily favoured team in a sporting contest earns no credit for victory, but is shamed by defeat; this team is said to be on a hiding to nothing.

Meanings

1. (UK, idiomatic, informal) A situation in which victory has little or no value, but defeat has a huge cost.
   • This often makes it a nervous, hiding-to-nothing game in which disasters are so much more memorable than successes 2003, Robin Birn, The international handbook of market research techniques, page 543:
   • It is a nasty situation and DFR knows that he is on a good hiding to nothing. He sometimes feels that he is the least understood and most unloved ATCO in [the UK] 1989, Dave Graves, A layman's guide to United Kingdom air traffic control, page 76:
   • It would have been madness to encourage them to back the mare : in fact I was on a hiding to nothing whatever happened. 1915, James Forman Sloan, A. Dick Luckman, Tod Sloan, page 245:
   • No legitimate excuse for introduction existed, or could exist, and the odds looked like a hiding to nothing should Bayard attempt to force a meeting […] 1931, The Atlantic Monthly, Making of America Project, page 60:
   • Company directors are on a hiding to nothing when it comes to trusting their reputations to the accounting statements for which they are responsible. 2003, Frank L. Clarke with G. W. Dean and Kyle Gaius Oliver, Corporate collapse: accounting, regulatory and ethical failure, page 39:

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