the.com/drop in the ocean
A thing so small it embarrasses itself for trying to matter.
means A quantity so tiny compared to what's needed that it makes almost no practical difference.
from The phrase traces to biblical language — Isaiah's image of nations being like 'a drop of a bucket' before God — later smoothed in English into 'a drop in the ocean,' swapping the bucket for the vastest basin imaginable to make the smallness sting harder.
- origin
- Biblical, Isaiah compared nations to it
- math check
- one drop in Pacific is basically zero percent
- misuse
- often said while still refusing to give more
- irony
- oceans are literally made of nothing but drops