Idiom
from pillar to post
Meaning
From one place, place, or thing to another, hither and thither.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The company sent me from pillar to post to fix my bill.”
“I travel from pillar to post to find the right parts for my car.”
“I spent all morning calling different departments and being sent from pillar to post without getting any answers.”
“The young intern spent his first week being moved from pillar to post as every manager needed help with a different urgent project.”
“After the storm damaged their house, the family had to move from pillar to post, staying in three different hotels in just one month.”
“The refugees were driven from pillar to post by shifting borders and uncaring bureaucracies, finding no permanent sanctuary anywhere.”
Examples
simple
“The company sent me from pillar to post to fix my bill.”
“I travel from pillar to post to find the right parts for my car.”
contextual
“I spent all morning calling different departments and being sent from pillar to post without getting any answers.”
“The young intern spent his first week being moved from pillar to post as every manager needed help with a different urgent project.”
“After the storm damaged their house, the family had to move from pillar to post, staying in three different hotels in just one month.”
complex
“The refugees were driven from pillar to post by shifting borders and uncaring bureaucracies, finding no permanent sanctuary anywhere.”
Origin
The phrase is perhaps a reference to the rapid movement of the ball in real tennis, possibly originating as from post to pillar. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (1993) notes that the latter variation dates to at least the 15th century, though the exact transition of the terms remains unproven. Given the chaos of the early game, the movement described was likely more a matter of frantic necessity than of strategy.
Key words
Related idioms
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