"can't do right for doing wrong" meaning in English

See can't do right for doing wrong in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} can't do right for doing wrong
  1. (British) Be in a situation where any course of action leads to a negative outcome. Tags: British Related terms: damned if one does and damned if one doesn't, can't win for losing, zugzwang

Download JSON data for can't do right for doing wrong meaning in English (2.2kB)

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      "expansion": "can't do right for doing wrong",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1971, George MacDonald Fraser, Flash for Freedom!, page 59",
          "text": "“Hold your confounded tongue!” he bawled. “You can't do right for doing wrong, can you? No, by G-d! […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Steve Collings, Michael Taillard, Corporate Finance for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, page 201",
          "text": "Insolvency doesn't necessarily happen when a company is doing poorly; quite the contrary, it can happen just as easily when a company is too successful (you see, sometimes you can't do right for doing wrong!).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Patricia Furness-Smith, chapter 2, in Overcoming Problem Eating: A Practical Guide, Icon Books",
          "text": "They, like the sufferer, need support, since the emotional demands placed upon them can be very intense. They often feel that they can't do right for doing wrong when trying to offer help to the sufferer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Be in a situation where any course of action leads to a negative outcome."
      ],
      "id": "en-can't_do_right_for_doing_wrong-en-phrase-i~bgzPN8",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(British) Be in a situation where any course of action leads to a negative outcome."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "damned if one does and damned if one doesn't"
        },
        {
          "word": "can't win for losing"
        },
        {
          "word": "zugzwang"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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  "word": "can't do right for doing wrong"
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      "expansion": "can't do right for doing wrong",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "damned if one does and damned if one doesn't"
    },
    {
      "word": "can't win for losing"
    },
    {
      "word": "zugzwang"
    }
  ],
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          "ref": "1971, George MacDonald Fraser, Flash for Freedom!, page 59",
          "text": "“Hold your confounded tongue!” he bawled. “You can't do right for doing wrong, can you? No, by G-d! […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Steve Collings, Michael Taillard, Corporate Finance for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, page 201",
          "text": "Insolvency doesn't necessarily happen when a company is doing poorly; quite the contrary, it can happen just as easily when a company is too successful (you see, sometimes you can't do right for doing wrong!).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Patricia Furness-Smith, chapter 2, in Overcoming Problem Eating: A Practical Guide, Icon Books",
          "text": "They, like the sufferer, need support, since the emotional demands placed upon them can be very intense. They often feel that they can't do right for doing wrong when trying to offer help to the sufferer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Be in a situation where any course of action leads to a negative outcome."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(British) Be in a situation where any course of action leads to a negative outcome."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "British"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "can't do right for doing wrong"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.