Between the devil and the deep blue sea quotes

This expression has existed since at least the 1600s. This expression doesn’t have to do with the devil of the Bible but to a seam around a ship’s hull near the water.

When a sailor attempted to caulk this seam in heavy seas, he was in serious danger of failing overboard and drowning. Of course, if he didn’t caulk the seam, the ship could fill with water and sink.

In other words, the sailor was faced with two awful choices: risk his life to repair the ship or risk the entire ship by not repairing the ship.

Examples of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Kerry: So are you going back to work soon?

Christine: I’d like to, but I’m not sure I can.

Kerry: Why not?

Christine: There’s only one daycare in town, and it has terrible reviews online. It says the employees are mean to the children, and the building is infested with cockroaches! I can’t leave my baby there.

Kerry: No, absolutely not! So are you going to stay at home longer?

Christine: I’d like to do that, too, but we need the money that I’d get from going back to work. I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Arlena: I’m loving this weather!

Nyima: Well, I’m glad the cold of winter is over, but I can’t handle all this sun.

Arlena: You don’t like the sun?

Nyima: No, not at all. If I wear sunscreen, my skin breaks out in hives. If I don’t wear sunscreen, I get burned really badly. I’m stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Either way, my skin is getting damaged. And I can’t just stay inside either.

More Examples

This excerpt is about voters who felt like the two main candidates for presidency were both bad choices.

• The useful cliché that is pounding like a bad headache through the frontal lobe of millions of voters is the one about choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. –Wall Street Journal

This excerpt is from an article about the ex-patriots of Tangier, Morocco.

• It is a high meeting place of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Europe and Africa, sanctity and sin, where men and women have long set out to find themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea. –New York Times

Summary

The phrase between the devil and the deep blue sea is an idiom that offers two equally terrible choices. People use this phrase to outline the difficulty they face making a decision because both options are horrible.

The witches are done being on call for you. All you know how to do is use and abuse. You treat us like we're pawns. Like we're pawns in your family's endless self-defeating schemes. No more. But congrats. You made it back to the top of the food chain.

Hope: All the witches in New Orleans think that I'm gonna melt the city if she doesn't come home.
Roman: You can do that?
Hope: Probably. I don't know.

Look, I don't know what happened between you and Elijah. And if he were here, he would know exactly what to say, but he's not, I am and I'm saying you misplayed this.

The phrase was originally 'Between the Devil and the deep sea'. The sea turned blue much later and the phrase became well-known via the title of a popular song. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was written by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen, and recorded by Cab Calloway in 1931, although that version of the phrase may have been circulating earlier.

What's the source of the original phrase? Well, we would really like to know. CANOE, the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything, would have us believe that it has a nautical origin (well, they would wouldn't they?). In her book, When a loose cannon flogs a dead horse there's the devil to pay, Olivia Isil unambiguously attributes a nautical origin to the phrase.

Set against that there's the explanation that this is from the usual meaning of Devil, i.e. the supreme spirit of evil. If it's that Devil we are talking about then the origin is straightforward - the Devil is bad and falling in the deep sea is bad, so when caught between the two we would be in difficulty.

People who like that explanation can point back to Greek mythology for an earlier version of the idea of being caught between evil and the sea. Homer's Odyssey refers to Odysseus being caught between Scylla (a six-headed monster) and Charybdis (a whirlpool).

To explain the nautical theory we'll need to define some sailing terminology. That's always dangerous ground for landlubbers and usually results in some horny-handed sailing type writing in to say that we don't know our scuppers from our square-knots, but here goes anyway...

"Devil - the seam which margins the waterways on a ship's hull".

This definition is from Henry Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, 1867. That definition wasn't entirely clear to me, but a correspondent who describes himself as 'an engineer and vessel constructor', clarified it this way:

"Devil - the seam between the deck planking and the topmost plank of the ship's side".

This seam would need to be watertight and would need filling (caulking) from time to time. On a ship at sea this would presumably require a sailor to be suspended over the side, or at least stand at the very edge of the deck. Either way it is easy to see how that might be described as 'between the devil and the deep sea'.

Incidentally, another term for filling a seam is paying. Those that like nautical origins also give this as the source for the Devil to pay, although the evidence is against them on that one.

The first recorded citation of 'the Devil and the deep sea' in print is in Robert Monro's His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes, 1637:

"I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea."

The seafaring theory is plausible at least, but does it really hold water? Two factors count against it. Firstly, it doesn't really explain the meaning. The devil on a ship isn't inherently dangerous. Secondly, does the phrase pre-date the nautical term 'devil'? We've no evidence to show the word in that context until over two hundred years after the first sighting of the phrase.

CANOE don't quite convince with this one. On balance it seems wise to stay on dry land and stick with the Devil we know.

What does the proverb between the devil and the deep blue sea mean?

If you say that you are between the devil and the deep blue sea, you mean that you are in a difficult situation where you have to choose between two equally unpleasant courses of action.

Who said between the devil and the deep blue sea?

The first recorded citation of 'the Devil and the deep sea' in print is in Robert Monro's His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes, 1637: "I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea."

Where did the saying between the devil and the deep blue sea come from?

This expression has existed since at least the 1600s. This expression doesn't have to do with the devil of the Bible but to a seam around a ship's hull near the water. When a sailor attempted to caulk this seam in heavy seas, he was in serious danger of failing overboard and drowning.

How do you use between the devil and the deep blue sea in a sentence?

— After two of my best friends had a terrible breakup, I've felt like I'm between the devil and the deep blue sea as I've continued being friends with both of them.