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low man on the totem pole



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Idioms and Phrases

Low in rank, least important person, as in I just joined the board so I'm low man on the totem pole . This slangy expression is thought to have been invented by the American comedian Fred Allen about 1940 and caught on despite its lack of application to a genuine totem pole.
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

“I was a skinny freshman — a low man on the totem pole — and this made me feel like a rebel.’

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I was a production assistant so I was the low man on the totem pole, worrying about everything from music for the show, to graphics, to booking the limousines and hotels for the talent and the production team.

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Judge Colleen McMahon said at the time: "I'm always uncomfortable when I'm asked in any context - it usually happens in the drug context - to sentence the low man on the totem pole while the big guy goes free."

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She compares the two: “If you are successful and get a job as a staff writer, you are one of many on a writing staff, you are the low man on the totem pole, so the expectation is not that you’re going to come in and know everything,†she said.

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“I’m not Rambo. Never pretended to be Rambo. We were surrounded by great people. Out of all the guys I was working with, I’m the low man on the totem pole. And I understood that,†Mullin told Baier.

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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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