amine Idiom

either feast or famine

Idiom(s): either feast or famine

Theme: AMOUNT

either too much (of something) or not enough (of something). (Also without either. Fixed order.)
• This month is very dry, and last month it rained almost every day. Our weather is either feast or famine.
• Sometimes we are busy, and sometimes we have nothing to do. It's feast or famine.

cross-examine

Idiom(s): cross-examine sb

Theme: LEGAL - COURTROOM

to ask someone questions in great detail; to question a suspect or a witness at great length.
• The police cross-examined the suspect for three hours.
• The lawyer plans to cross-examine the witness tomorrow morning.

Feast today, famine tomorrow

If you indulge yourself with all that you have today, you may have to go without tomorrow.

feast or a famine|a feast or a famine|either a fea

n. phr. Plenty or very little; big success or bad failure. In this business it's either a feast or a famine. He is very careless with his money, it is always a feast or a famine with him.

famine

famine
see feast or famine.

feast or famine

feast or famine
Also, either feast or famine. Either too much or too little, too many or too few. For example, Free-lancers generally find it's feast or famine—too many assignments or too few, or Yesterday two hundred showed up at the fair, today two dozen—it's either feast or famine. This expression, which transfers an overabundance or shortage of food to numerous other undertakings, was first recorded in 1732 as feast or fast, the noun famine being substituted in the early 1900s.

get one's head examined

get one's head examined
Also, have one's head examined. One is crazy or absolutely wrong. For example, You like this food? Go get your head examined, or If you believe that story, you should have your head examined. This hyperbolic and usually jocular expression of disagreement may, thought Eric Partridge, allude to the now discredited field of phrenology, which holds that the configurations of the skull reveal mental and emotional characteristics. [Early 1900s]