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square the circle



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Idioms and Phrases

Try to do the impossible, as in Getting that bill through the legislature is the same as trying to square the circle . This idiom alludes to the impossibility of turning a circle into a square. John Donne may have been the first to use it ( Sermons , 1624): “Go not thou about to square either circle (God or thyself).”
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Fortunately Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, was there to square the circle.

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But the group’s vagueness as it tries to square the circle of its own positions has fueled suspicion.

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But perhaps the court will ignore or try to sidestep this embarrassing point when the case returns to the justices, and somehow try to square the circle by holding that these embryos are somehow not yet “people” when such agreements are initially made.

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The Scottish Conservatives said it was no surprise that ministers "can't square the circle" after they promised the last-minute council tax freeze.

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"Hard to square the circle", we're told.

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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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