not hold a candle to someone

Example: “The remake doesn't hold a candle to the original film.”

Origin: Before electric lighting, a skilled craftsman working after dark needed someone to hold a candle close enough to illuminate the detailed work — a genuinely useful task, but a menial, entry-level one, typically given to the least experienced apprentice in the workshop. John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection already treats candle-holding as the lowliest job available: "who that worst maie, shall holde the candell." Saying someone "can't hold a candle to" a skilled person originally meant they weren't even competent enough for that most basic supporting role, let alone able to do the actual work themselves — the figurative idiom in its now-familiar form is first recorded in 1883, in William Norris's novel No New Thing.