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Reader question: Would you please explain the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”? My comments: This is an American idiom, and a great one. Got to love American idioms – They’re simple, vivid and you can often guess out their meaning from a literal analysis of the words involved. A rock, you see, is a hard place. And therefore if you get stuck in between a rock and a hard place, you’re caught between two hard places. Or two rocks, take your pick. And you’re unable to move because there’s little room for maneuvering in there. In other words, you’re in difficulty, facing tough choices to make, getting caught between two opposing forces that are equal in strengths. You don’t know whether to turn left or right, or go forward or take a step back. Still in other useful words, you’re in a dilemma, or in a quandary. In colloquial terms, you’re in a fix, or in a pickle. You can say, for instance, that US President Barack Obama is currently caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is BP, the oil giant responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The hard place is the local oil industry. In the wake of the oil spill, Obama suspended all offshore drilling – until further safety measure are secured. But that has since drawn the wraths of the local oil industry, which creates thousands of lucrative jobs. Protesters, current or potential job losers, say they’re the wrong people to get punished for BP’s big blunder. | 
