Lombard Street to a China orange

English

Alternative forms

• all Lombard Street to a China orange
• all Lombard Street to a china orange
• Lombard-street to a China orange

Etymology

• Lombard Street as a metonym for all the money in British banks. A China orange as something of trifling value.

Noun

Lombard Street to a China orange (uncountable)

1. (figurative, dated) very long odds (in favour or against an outcome)
   • 1885 John Conroy Hutcheson On Board the Esmeralda (Chapter Fifteen. “A Little Unpleasantness.”)

     As Jorrocks expressed it, in the event of such a catastrophe happening, “It was all Lombard Street to a China orange we’d lose the number of our mess and sarve as food for fishes!”

   • 1906, Burford Delannoy, chapter XXIII, in Prince Charlie:

     The odds, too, are against a drunkard's reformation; all Lombard Street to a China orange.

   • 1907 Herbert M. Vaughan, The Naples Riviera (Chapter II "The Vesuvian Shore and Monte Sant' Angelo")

     Mora has been a favourite recreation with these people almost from their cradles, and he would be a bold man indeed who would venture to challenge a Torrese at this game, for the native's skill and experience are almost bound to tell eventually in his favour, and the odds are "Lombard Street to a China orange" against the outside player.

   • 1937, Sir Malcolm Campbell, The Roads and the Problem of their Safety, London: Hutchinson, page 151:

     It looked the proverbial Lombard Street to a china orange that he must be run down and killed. By a superlatively skilful piece of driving, the bus-driver just managed to avoid him[.]