Dictionary

hold a mirror up to en · VERB

Meanings

1. (alt-of, alternative) Alternative form of hold a mirror to.
   alt of hold a mirror to
   • Just as the Sphinx presented a paradigm of self-reference to hold a mirror up to Oedipus, the myth of Oedipus also holds a mirror up to us as witnesses. 2018, Marcel Danesi, Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, page 55:
   • There are so many times when someone needs to hold a mirror up to the face of the Church... 2017, Rev. David K. Fly, My Life Under the Big Top: Reflections of a Comic, Clown and Priest:
   • Catherine used comedy to hold a mirror up to her people, to expose and therefore correct the problems of her society. 2017, Lurana Donnels O'Malley, The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Russia:
   • To hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature. c. 1599-1601, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 2

Forms