Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
No pronunciation record was provided for this word.
verb
To create one's own fate, as a result of one's chosen character and actions; to experience the appropriate consequences of one's behavior.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: US, idiomatic, often
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Probably from a German proverb, notably adapted by Karl Marx to describe the exploited worker who must sell himself (his own hide) in the labor market; the denotative metaphoric analogy is to bringing animal hides to market, but simultaneously also the self-evident connotative overtones are of chattel slavery and prostitution, in which human corporeality is exploited and personhood is devalued; in the quote below, the word hiding lends both its literal and figurative senses to the parsing: both literal skinning (of an animal) and also flogging and fleecing (of a person, that is, beating and robbing): : 1867, Karl Marx, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Capital, vol. 1 ch. 6: :: [T]he possessor of labour-power follows [...] , timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
