51³Ô¹Ï

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ship of state

noun

  1. a nation or its affairs likened to a ship under sail.


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51³Ô¹Ï History and Origins

Origin of ship of state1

First recorded in 1665–75
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Idioms and Phrases

The nation, as in We can't help but wonder who will be steering our ship of state a hundred years from now . This metaphoric expression was first recorded in English in a translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1675).
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Trump’s people, including White House press secretary, or as I like to call her, Pep Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told us Trump is on top of things and that corrections have to be made because the ship of state has been set adrift by the previous administration.

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Following in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Gerald Ford’s attempt to right the ship of state, Carter blew into town an outsider intent on shaking up the Washington establishment.

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And while Reagan successfully convinced us he alone had ended the Cold War, the rats like Mitch McConnell snuck into the ship of state and began eating at its foundation like so many rabid termites with a head full of bad hallucinogens and a stomach full of tapeworms.

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So remember this: After whipsawing the nation through his dumb and vicious shitshow of a first term, nearly capsizing the ship of state by inciting thousands of morons to riot over the false premise that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen†from him, and becoming the first president in American history to be twice impeached, Donald Trump decided to run for president in 2024 primarily so that he might avoid facing punishment for his many alleged crimes.

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Calm captains of the ship of state struggle to navigate the world system’s waves and shoals.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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