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from the sublime to the ridiculous



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Idioms and Phrases

From the beautiful to the silly, from great to puny. For example, They played first Bach and then an ad jingle—from the sublime to the ridiculous . The reverse, from the ridiculous to the sublime , is used with the opposite meaning. Coined by Tom Paine in The Age of Reason (1794), in which he said the two are so closely related that it is but one step from one to the other, the phrase has been often repeated in either order.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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from the outsetFrom the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step