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fat is in the fire, the



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Idioms and Phrases

A course of action with inevitable bad consequences has begun; there's trouble ahead. For example, Now the fat's in the fire—the boss arrived early and will see we haven't even started work . This expression, with its allusion to fat dropping into a fire and causing a burst of flames, was already a proverb in John Heywood's 1546 collection.

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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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“The Fall of the House of Usher”fat of the land, the