Englishleave someone holding the bag
Meaning: To leave someone else with the blame or responsibility.
Example: “His partners disappeared with the money and left him holding the bag.”
Equivalents in other languages
Dutch: Met de gebakken peren zitten Literally: To be left with the baked pears
Origin: American, attested from the late 1700s, and two readings support it. The blunter one is criminal: when a group is caught, the person physically holding the bag of goods is the one who cannot plausibly deny involvement, so leaving them with it transfers the entire consequence to whoever is slowest to let go. The other is a practical joke that was once widespread in rural America, the snipe hunt, in which a newcomer is stationed in the woods after dark holding an open bag and told to wait for the others to drive a bird into it, while the rest of the party quietly goes home. British English produces the same idea as being left holding the baby. Both versions turn on the same detail: the object is not valuable, it is simply proof.
More English idioms
- look like death warmed over To look/feel ill or exhausted.
- look sharp To look neat and stylish; also, to hurry or be alert.
- lose one's cool To become angry.
- lose one's temper To become suddenly angry. To hold one's temper means to remain calm when irritated.
- low man on the totem pole The person of lowest rank.
- make a clean breast of it To admit and explain some wrongdoing; to confess something.
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Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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