draw the short straw
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to be randomly chosen for an unpleasant task
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
được chọn ngẫu nhiên cho một nhiệm vụ không thoải mái
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: pull the shortest straw from a set
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The blushing (with reason) bride that drew the short straw was one Jo; formerly of a record store in Chicago, who sold Ben a rare MBV bootleg, causing him to drop immediately to one knee.
Two other members of the platoon have drawn the short straw, and are now dressed in their best uniforms to perform the once - monthly guard duties at the Allied Kommandatura building.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “draw the short straw” mean?
to be randomly chosen for an unpleasant task Literally: pull the shortest straw from a set
Is “draw the short straw” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.