devil take the hindmost
See also: Devil take the hindmost
English
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edit- An imprecation that everyone should look after their own interests, leaving those who cannot cope to whatever fate befalls them.
- c. 1608–1610 (date written), Francis Beaumont, Iohn Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies a Bleeding. […], 4th edition, London: […] VV[illiam] J[ones] for Richard Hawkins, […], published 1634, →OCLC, Act V, page 66:
- What if a toy take um ith heeles now, and they runn all away, and cry the Divell take the hindmoſt.
- 1742, James Oglethorpe, “Letter to the Honorable Trustees”, in Lucian Lamar Knight, Kenneth Coleman, Milton Ready, editors, The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, volume 23, published 1914:
- Land Alianable which would bring in the Stock Jobbing Temper, the Devill take the Hindmost.
- 1786, Robert Burns, "Address to a Haggis":
- Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
- Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
- Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
- Are bent like drums;
- The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
- ‘Bethankit’ hums.
- 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “Two Centuries”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker), page 170:
- And [we] coldly see the all-conquering valiant Sons of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille, as if this were Nature’s Law;—mumbling to ourselves some vague janglement of Laissez-faire, Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one nexus of man to man: Free-trade, Competition, and Devil take the hindmost, our latest Gospel yet preached!
- 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter CVIII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 572:
- "Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."
- 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Love Never Dies, Song nr. 22
- "Choose your hand, try your best. He who wins, wins it all. Devil take the hindmost."
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