See Also: DANGER

1. About as risky as selling the farm to buy up blocks of Xerox in the early ‘60s —John Stravinsky about horse syndicate investments, Wall Street Journal, August 15, 1986
2. The art of gambling is like the art of painting. You’ve got to know when to stop —Maurice Edelman
3. Betting on Martin was like betting on an aging horse that lived on sourmash whiskey —Will Weaver
4. (Politics with a mass of people is as) chancy and fickle as a whore’s heart —Robert Traver
5. Chancy as trying to catch a fish in the open hand —Elizabeth Hardwick
6. It [the need to risk] was like statistics or gambling; you had to compute probabilities. And there was always the unforseen, the little thing you overlooked that would catch you up in the end —Mary McCarthy
7. Precarious as wheat farming —Larry McMurtry

   The profession McMurtry is likening to wheat farming is film making. He builds on the simile as follows: “He might raise a great crop of films … then watch them all wither in the theater.”

8. Risky … It’s like playing with a chemistry set without reading the directions —Vincent Canby, New York Times, January 22, 1986

   The risky activity described is movie making by the inexperienced.

9. To remove the element of risk is like playing cards with a stacked deck —Stephen Gillers, New York Times/Op Ed, November 23, 1986

   Gillers, a law professor, used this simile to discuss the expose of people in the financial world who had been taking the risk out of arbitrage by dealing on specially garnered or insider information.

(See also DANGER.)

dance on the razor’s edge To tempt fate, to invite trouble, to skate on thin ice. The allusion is to the very sharp and very thin edge of a straight razor. This expression is apparently an extension of the earlier phrase on the razor’s edge ‘in a very precarious or dangerous position,’ which dates from the early 17th century. George Chapman used the expression in his famous translation of Homer’s Iliad (1611):

lay it on the line To risk something valuable such as one’s career, reputation, or life; to speak or answer candidly, clearly, and categorically; to say precisely what one means; to give or pay money. In this expression, line is a figurative indication of demarcation between two extremes such as success and failure, clarity and obscurity, or debit and credit. Although originally limited to financial matters such as payment of debts, in contemporary usage lay it on the line usually refers to speaking frankly or risking something of importance.

Variations include put it on the line and on the line.

leap in the dark See DEATH.

play with fire To trifle with or become involved in a serious or potentially dangerous matter. This expression uses fire figuratively to represent any situation or entity which can be beneficial or useful, but which always holds the potential for harm or disaster.

In contemporary usage, play with fire is often applied to romantic entanglements or sexual encounters which, by their very nature, carry the risk of moral or emotional distress.

put one’s head in the lion’s (wolf’s) mouth To court danger; to ask for trouble. In the Aesop fable which gave rise to the phrase, the mouth belonged to a wily wolf; a gullible crane inserted its head to extract a bone. At some point in the phrase’s development, the wolf evolved into a lion—perhaps through confusion with beard the lion in his den, or perhaps because the size and ferocity of a lion seem more appropriate when the phrase is applied to human foolhardiness.

ride for a fall To invite injury or misfortune by reckless conduct; to court danger, ask for trouble; to behave so imperiously as to be headed for a comeuppance. One source conjectures a derivation from horse racing, saying a jockey “rides for a fall” when he deliberately loses a race, often by riding in such a way as to be thrown. Whether or not its origin is this specific, the literal phrase seems clearly to have its roots in horsemanship. The expression is now used almost exclusively in its figurative sense; conceptually it is akin to the well-known saying from Proverbs:

Russian roulette A risky activity or predicament, especially one which endangers a person’s life. In the game of Russian roulette, a revolver is loaded with one bullet, the cartridge cylinder is spun, the gun is pointed at one’s own head, and the trigger is pulled. If the revolver can hold six bullets, the odds are one in six that when the trigger is pulled, the person will kill himself. This “game” took its name from roulette, another game of chance in which a small metal ball is spun onto a revolving wheel, coming to rest in one of thirty-seven or thirty-eight numbered compartments. Its “Russian” designation probably derives from its being a popular pastime among the nihilistic intelligentsia of 19th-century Russia. Although both roulette and Russian roulette are forms of gambling, the stakes in the latter are considerably higher. Russian roulette is applied figuratively in situations where one takes his life into his own hands; for example, “It’s Russian roulette out there on the freeways at rush hour.”

take the bear by the tooth Recklessly to risk danger; to provoke to attack. The phrase’s meaning is self-evident, its origin unknown.