Meaning
To be left to face trouble, scrutiny or criticism alone, without support or rescue, usually abandoned by the very people who put you in the position; also, to be kept waiting in uncertainty for an uncomfortably long time. Mainly American and strongly political in flavour. Informal to journalistic; harshly critical of whoever abandons the person left twisting. Regional use: American English.
Origin
The imagery is the gallows: a hanged body left hanging and turning slowly on the rope, which Wiktionary records as the allusion behind the idiom. The phrase became famous in the Watergate era. John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic affairs adviser, said of L. Patrick Gray, the acting FBI director whom the White House declined to defend during his 1973 confirmation hearings, that he should be left to 'twist slowly, slowly in the wind'; the remark surfaced in the Watergate investigations, and Oxford Reference credits Ehrlichman with the doubled form. Wiktionary's earliest printed citation is later: a 1987 New York Times report that Oliver North had been 'left to twist in the wind' over Iran-Contra. So the modern political vogue is Nixon-era, but the clean documentary trail of citations runs from the 1973 reporting to 1987 and after.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- left to twist in the wind
- left twisting in the wind
- twist slowly in the wind
- twisting in the wind
Usage Examples
- The spokesperson was left to twist in the wind for a week before the chief executive addressed the allegations.
- Once the audit turned hostile, the board let the finance director twist in the wind.
- Do not promise your deputy your backing and then let her twist slowly in the wind when the review turns political.