the.com/bull in a china shop
Confidence with zero spatial awareness, measured in broken heirlooms.
means Someone who barges into delicate situations with clumsy force, wrecking things that needed a careful touch.
from A straightforward image-idiom from the 1800s: picture an actual bull loose among shelves of porcelain. The phrase caught on in Britain and spread widely because the picture does all the work — no hidden history needed, just a large animal, a small aisle, and inevitable breakage.
- origin
- Frederick Marryat novel, 1834, Jack Ashore
- irony
- bulls are not actually colorblind to red
- real cause
- size and clumsiness, not rage, breaks the china
- modern use
- describes tact-free people, not just oafs