roost » roast

Chiefly in:   chickens come home to roast

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • The deals were badly done and badly managed. By summer of 2000 all those chickens came home to roast. (Franchising World, June 1, 2003)
  • Strange that anyone in the US found it unacceptable to have a game where the player aims and shoots at the former US president. This is a typical “chickens coming home to roast” scenario. (Mail & Guardian Online forum, South Africa, Nov. 23, 2004)
  • “Last year Britain’s economy was really very strong, but this year will be the year when the chickens come home to roast,” said Bootle. (The Telegraph, Jan. 16, 2005)

This sometimes appears as a pun, but the above examples (and many others on the Web) are evidently unironic.

| link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/11 |

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