英和和英

発音

動詞

make bricks without straw (三人称単数 現在形 makes bricks without straw, 現在分詞 making bricks without straw, 過去形および過去分詞形 made bricks without straw)

1. (idiomatic) To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible.
   • 1938, Jonas A. Jonasson, Bricks without straw: the story of Linfield College, page 168:

     The founders did more than "make bricks without straw; they dreamed of a great cathedral and laid the foundations for it.

   • 2008, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, →ISBN, page 30:

     To call on the owners of little farms, the tradesmen, labourers and sailors to pay their proportion of a [£20,000] tax, when perhaps there is not half that sum in circulation is something harder than being forced to make bricks without straw,” he wrote; "it is to make them without clay."

   • 2014, Peter F. Serra, Snapshots of Inspiration, →ISBN, page 170:

     The problems that we may find ourselves confronted with may be similar to a make bricks without straw condition, imposed by not only others but in large measure ourselves.

使用する際の注意点

• Often expressed in the proverbial form: you can't make bricks without straw.

別の表記

• make bricks without straws

参考

• you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

Further reading

• “you can t make bricks without straw” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• “you can't make bricks without straw”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.