| 单词 | to rise like a rocket and fall like a stick |
| 释义 | > as lemmasto rise like a rocket and fall like a stick P1. Proverb. to rise like a rocket and fall like a stick and variants: to experience a sudden, meteoric rise, followed quickly by a rapid fall in esteem, from favour, etc. Cf. stick n.1 5c.Apparently coined by Thomas Paine. ΘΚΠ the world > action or operation > prosperity > advancement or progress > advance, progress, or develop [verb (intransitive)] > rise in prosperity, power, or rank > rise rapidly then fall to rise like a rocket and fall like a stick1782 1782 T. Paine in Freeman's Jrnl. (U.S.) 13 Mar. 1/3 As he rose like a rocket, he would fall like the stick. 1792 T. Paine Let. to Addressers 4 As he [sc. Burke] rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick. 1838 R. H. Barham Let. 7 Mar. (1870) II. vii. 48 Poor man, he has gone up like a rocket and is coming down like the stick. 1865 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. July 98/2 Who will stare when you describe the Broadbrim-Spiffy combination which sent you up like a rocket, and the sudden collapse of that combination which will assuredly bring you down like a stick? 1909 Brit. Weekly 7 Jan. 405/3 We know the talk about a man going up like a rocket and coming down like a stick... It is generally the man's own fault. 1950 G. B. Shaw Farfetched Fables 83 Political adventurers and ‘tin Jesuses’ rose like rockets to dictatorships and fell to earth like sticks. 2003 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 12 June 16/1 ‘Up like a rocket, down like a stick’—thus, roughly, the multinational career of the Polish-American sculptor Elie Nadelman. < as lemmas |
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