thin ice

[ eg ]

SEE DEFINITION OF thin ice

as in
as inimperilment
as indanger
as inhazard

Synonyms for thin ice

razor's edge

MOST RELEVANT

EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR THIN ICE

But I'll come off the thin ice, and you shall have nothing but facts now.

"I'm showing ye how an old woman walks on thin ice," said Martha.

At 50 you are walking on thin ice; look out, danger is near.

Mr. Baker ventured out upon the thin ice of cross-examination.

But the day was so cold, there was little danger from thin ice.

One morning the party came to a stream covered with thin ice.

The foolish animals, trying to cross the thin ice, broke through.

A farmer who came into the train told us there was thin ice on the ponds.

In the matter of libel, they are adepts at skating on thin ice.

In fact, I began to feel almost as though I was getting on thin ice.

WORD ORIGIN

mid-14c., from northern England dialect, from Old Norse egg, which vied with Middle English eye, eai (from Old English æg) until finally displacing it after 1500; both are from Proto-Germanic *ajja(m) (cf. Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, Dutch, Old High German, German ei, Gothic ada), probably from PIE *owyo-/*oyyo- "egg" (cf. Old Church Slavonic aja, Russian jajco, Breton ui, Welsh wy, Greek oon, Latin ovum); possibly derived from root *awi- "bird." Caxton (15c.) writes of a merchant (probably a north-country man) in a public house on the Thames who asked for eggs:

She did, however, recognize another customer's request for "eyren." Bad egg in the figurative sense is from 1855. To have egg on (one's) face "be made to look foolish" is attested by 1948.

Eggs Benedict attested by 1898. The figure of speech represented in to have all (one's) eggs in one basket is attested by 1660s.