Meaning
Facing a choice between two equally harmful or unwelcome options; caught in a dilemma with no good way out. The two dangers need not be physical; the phrase suits any predicament where every available course is bad. Neutral to mildly dramatic register, common in journalism and everyday speech for any difficult dilemma. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The first recorded use is Robert Monro's 1637 memoir 'His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes': 'I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea.' The phrase circulated without 'blue' for centuries, and variants with 'the Dead Sea' or 'the Red Sea' are also recorded; the now-standard 'deep blue sea' form was popularised by the 1931 song by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen, recorded by Cab Calloway. A widely repeated nautical explanation takes 'devil' to be the seam between a ship's deck planking and her topmost side plank, so that the phrase described sailors working on a plank overhanging the sea; Admiral Henry Smyth's 1867 'Sailor's Word-Book' does define a 'devil' seam. However, the nautical sense of 'devil' is not evidenced until roughly two centuries after the phrase first appeared in print, which undermines that derivation. The more plausible reading is simply Satan: trapped between the devil and drowning, an idea with an ancient antecedent in Homer's Scylla and Charybdis.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- between the devil and the deep sea
- betwixt the devil and the deep sea
- caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
Usage Examples
- Accept the pay cut or face redundancy: the strikers were between the devil and the deep blue sea.
- With two conflicting court orders, the agency found itself between the devil and the deep blue sea.
- Refunding the tickets would sink the budget, but refusing would anger the fans, so the club was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.