Hiding To Nothing Meaning

(idiomatic, Britain, informal) A situation in which victory has little or no value, but defeat has a huge cost.

Example: 1915, James Forman Sloan and A. Dick Luckman, Tod Sloan‎, pages 245:
  It would have been madness to encourage them to back the mare : in fact I was on a hiding to nothing whatever happened.
1931, The Atlantic Monthly‎, Making of America Project, pages 60:
  No legitimate excuse for introduction existed, or could exist, and the odds looked like a hiding to nothing should Bayard attempt to force a meeting […]
1989, Dave Graves, A layman's guide to United Kingdom air traffic control‎, page 76:
  It is a nasty situation and DFR knows that he is on a good hiding to nothing. He sometimes feels that he is the least understood and most unloved ATCO in [the UK]
2003, Robin Birn, The international handbook of market research techniques‎, page 543:
  This often makes it a nervous, hiding-to-nothing game in which disasters are so much more memorable than successes
2003, Frank L. Clarke; G. W. Dean, Kyle Gaius Oliver, Corporate collapse: accounting, regulatory and ethical failure‎, page 39:
  Company directors are on a hiding to nothing when it comes to trusting their reputations to the accounting statements for which they are responsible.

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