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Hamlet vocabulary
6 idioms used
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honor in the breach
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tags: [idiom]
► definition
Definition:refers to a custom, precept, law or edict that would be more honorable to a person by breaching than by observing. Many precepts of the old testament are selectively ignored in this fashion.
► uses
Uses:
The abstinence demanded by Islamic tradition was more honored in the breach, and beside each name was the libation each guest favored; it was a lesson Evan had learned from the irascible Emmanual Weingrass.
Robert Ludlum. The Icarus Agenda. p.38 (1988)
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HORATIO Is it a custom?
HAMLET Ay, marry, is't; But to my mind, — though I am native here, And to the manner born, — it is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
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—A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God’s Englishman calls it caning on the breech.
And says John Wyse:
—’Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
James Joyce. Ulysses
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