Sophie's choice
noun
Used in reference to a difficult situation in which a person must choose between two equally deserving alternatives: for environmentalists, it’s something of a Sophie’s choice: do we want clean, smog-free air at the local level or lower greenhouse gas emissions at the global level? fans find themselves having to make a Sophie’s Choice between two favourite bands, foregoing one to see the other play...
- The subtitles are confusingly written, but so is the English dub, and neither really correspond to each other, so it's kind of Sophie's Choice on that one.
- That would then entail a kind of Sophie's choice situation where you have to decide what bills you can pay.
- She plays the lead singer in a cover band who faced a difficult decision 20 years earlier—a kind of Sophie's Choice between her obligations as a married mother of three and rock & roll.
Origin
With allusion to the 1979 novel Sophie's Choice by William Styron (1925–2006), in which a mother arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp is forced to choose which of her two children is to be killed; failure to make a choice will result in the death of both children.