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Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
What does breaking a butterfly on a wheel mean?
Where did the phrase 'break a butterfly on a wheel' come from?
What does breaking someone on the wheel mean?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? A rhetorical question referring to an excessive amount of force that has been applied to achieve something minor, unimportant, or insignificant. The line is a quotation from Alexander Pope's poem "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot."
- Break a butterfly on a wheel
break a butterfly on a wheel. use unnecessary force in...
- Break a butterfly on a wheel
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" is a quotation from Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" of January 1735. It alludes to "breaking on the wheel", a form of torture in which victims had their long bones broken by an iron bar while tied to a Catherine wheel.
break a butterfly on a wheel. use unnecessary force in destroying something fragile or insignificant. In former times, breaking someone upon the wheel was a form of punishment or torture which involved fastening criminals to a wheel so that their bones would be broken or dislocated.
Sep 14, 2021 · to use unnecessary force in destroying something fragile—alludes to a wheel used as an instrument of torture—first occurs in An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), by the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who perhaps coined this phrase.
BREAK A BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL definition: to use far more force than is necessary to do something | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples.
Alexander Pope in Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735) wrote the rhetorical question, “Who breaks the butterfly on the wheel?” In other words, who would use such force on a delicate creature like a butterfly? Pope’s image of breaking a butterfly on the wheel struck a powerful chord, hence the expression.
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? A rhetorical question referring to an excessive amount of force that has been applied to achieve something minor, unimportant, or insignificant. The line is a quotation from Alexander Pope's poem "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot."
