Meaning
To move from a bad situation into an even worse one while trying to escape it. Almost always framed as motion - going, jumping, or falling from the first predicament into the second - and often used when a hasty exit from trouble makes matters worse. Neutral register; typically follows a verb of motion and carries a tone of rueful hindsight. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The expression was coined in English, not borrowed. The Phrase Finder attributes it to Thomas More, who used it in 1532 in his printed attack on William Tyndale, The Confutacyon of Tyndales Answere, complaining that Tyndale had 'conuayed hym self out of the fryenge panne, fayre into the fyre'. The imagery carried contemporary horror: an English book of 1521 already pictured devils carrying a frying pan to torment souls in, and 'the fire' evoked the literal stake awaiting heretics under Henry VIII. John Heywood then printed the saying in his 1546 collection of English proverbs, which fixed it in the language. Parallel images of escaping one peril into a worse one exist in many European languages, but the English wording traces to More.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- From the frying pan into the fire
Usage Examples
- She quit the toxic restaurant job for a startup that folded within a month - out of the frying pan, into the fire.
- Moving to a cheaper flat two hours from work left him exhausted and still broke; he had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
- Ditching one unreliable supplier for an even worse one showed how easily a firm can go out of the frying pan and into the fire.