"Fall Through the Cracks" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms
Channel: Superduper English Idioms
Date: 02/09/2020

0:00 - How to Say, “Fall through the cracks.”
0:20 - Examples of “Fall through the cracks.”
1:07 - Meaning of “Fall through the cracks.”
2:09 - Origin of “Fall through the cracks.”
4:11 - More Examples of “Fall through the cracks.”
4:43 - Conclusion

“Fall through the cracks.”

You might’ve heard someone say that they let something, “fall through the cracks,” meaning that they forgot about or overlooked something.

“Don’t let any of your chores fall through the cracks,” you might say to your forgetful child one Sunday morning.

Your granddad might be giving you advice, “Don’t let relationships with good friends fall through the cracks, no matter how busy your life gets.”

“We will not let any child fall through the cracks, which is why we are going to double funding for social programs,” the premier might say during a speech.

As you can tell, “fall through the cracks”, means that someone or something - a particular issue, concern or responsibility - was neglected, left behind, disregarded, ignored or escaped attention.

Instead of “fall through the cracks,” you could also say, “slip through the cracks,” though “slip” makes the idiom sound like it’s a criminal escaping punishment.

You may also hear, “fall between the cracks,” which is simply the idiom misheard and repeated (an “eggcorn”), but it does retain the same meaning.

The origin of “fall through the cracks” is unclear, but evidence points to the idiom simply being a metaphor.

Imagine you are standing on the deck of a wooden ship with a bag of silver coins, but unbeknownst to you, a rip in the bag allows coins to fall out…

… some of these coins fall onto the wooden planks and are easily retrievable, but others “fall through the cracks” in the deck and can only be rescued with great effort.

“Fall through the cracks” as a metaphor makes sense, considering that in Britain, they prefer to say, “slip through the net”, and in Germany, “fall through the grating”.

If you don’t want things in your life to “fall through the cracks”, it’s best to make lists and keep them somewhere that you’ll see them often.

Whether you’ve got your to-do list and your list of goals written on a piece of paper or in a note-taking app, having them in writing ensures that nothing “falls through the cracks”.

Though not all things that “fall through the cracks” will be a big deal; but some are and the old proverb goes, “It’s only a dream until you write it down, and then it becomes a goal.”

“I let a few things on my to-do list fall through the cracks today, because I was so busy,” your partner might be telling you after finally sitting down to dinner.

“I was so busy chasing money that I let my health fall through the cracks,” your friend who is now sick at the hospital might say.

So, whenever you come across a long list of things to do, or perhaps things more important, don’t forget to remind everyone not to let anything “fall through the cracks.”

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