# the eye of a needle

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-eye-of-a-needle
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A standard for something so difficult it is all but impossible to pass or achieve.

## Examples

- Getting into that university is like passing through the eye of a needle.
- With thousands of applicants for a handful of grants, funding felt like threading the eye of a needle.
- The approval process was the eye of a needle through which almost no proposal survived intact, each one whittled down by so many committees that what emerged bore little resemblance to what had gone in.

## Origin

The phrase comes from Jesus's saying about wealth in Matthew 19:24, repeated in Mark 10:25: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The largest familiar animal set against the smallest familiar opening makes the point with deliberate impossibility. A persistent later tradition claimed the Eye of the Needle was a low gate in Jerusalem that a camel could squeeze through if unloaded, softening the saying into mere difficulty — but there is no evidence such a gate existed, and the reading looks like an attempt to make the hard image more comfortable. In English the eye of a needle stands for a threshold so narrow that passing it is nearly out of the question — a near-impossible test, standard, or bottleneck.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.