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Are there idioms or expressions in English that describe going from one bad situation to one that's even worse?
I heard "between a rock and hard place" but this describes a dilemma not really a transition. I am looking for an expression that describes someone trying to get out of a bad situation but after much effort, the situation only got worse.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
from the pot to the frying pan. I guess our book characters have it a little bit better ;P
There's always the old saw:
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Not quite an idiom, but a somewhat familiar expression is
Discovering that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Transition period - "It went downhill from there"
More at http://another-word-for.com/another_word_for_go-from-bad-to-worse.html
@Robusto had a funny one - Here are my favourites:
Before we stood on the edge of the precipice, now we have take a great step forward.
Before we were with our backs against the wall, now we have done a 180 degree turn.
Here's some interesting history on the frying pan phrase from From A Hog on Ice by Charles Earle Funk with some alternate versions:
TO JUMP OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE - "The same expression or one closely allied to it is common to many languages; in the second century the Greek equivalent was 'out of the smoke into the flame'; the Italian and Portuguese, 'to fall from the frying pan into the coals'; the Gaelic, 'out of the cauldron into the fire,' and the French, from which the English may be a translation,' to leap from the frying pan into the fire ('tomber de la poéle dans le feu')' The sense of the expression has always been to escape one evil predicament by leaping into another just as bad or worse. The English usage is traceable to a religious argument that arose between William Tyndale, translator of the Bible into English, and Sir Thomas More, best remembered now as the author of Utopia. The argument started in 1528 upon the publication of a paper by More, 'A Dialoge concerning Heresyes.' This elicited a treatise from Tyndale in 1530, 'An answerer unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge,' and this in turn brought forth from More, two years later, 'The Confutacyon of Tyndales Answere,' wherein More brings in our expression, saying that his adversary 'featly conuayed himself out of the frying panne fayre into the fyre.' It is a little grim to recall that Tyndale was publicly strangled and burned as a heretic in 1536, but that More was not alive to rejoice, for he, a year earlier, had been hung, through perjured testimony, as a traitor because he would not approve the bigamous marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn."
You can always just say "It went from bad to worse," although that's not idiomatic.
One of my favourite Aussie sayings is:
up shit creek without a paddle.
This idiom is used in reference to a person who is in a bad situation that is likely to get worse, and in which there appears to be little or no hope of a way out.
If you are more interested in placing emphasis on the steadily worsening nature of a situation, another way to put it is to say that you are:
digging yourself into a hole.
Between the devil and deep blue sea.
... someone trying to get out of a bad situation but after much effort, the situation only got worse
Also:
pouring gasoline on the fire
This phrase implies that the effort itself (the gasoline) is making the problem (the fire) worse, not just leaving one situation and hopping into second bad situation.
