asleep at the switch

English

Etymology

Probably an allusion to the important responsibilities of a railway switchman.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Adjective

asleep at the switch

  1. (idiomatic) Neglectful of an important task, responsibility, or opportunity.
    Synonym: asleep at the wheel
    • 1909, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, “Municipal Review 1907-1908,”, in The American Journal of Sociology, volume 14, number 4, page 488:
      His vote demonstrates that the people of Philadelphia are not asleep at the switch, are not indifferent to their political duties.
    • 1934 October 5, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter X, in Right Ho, Jeeves, London: Herbert Jenkins […], →OCLC:
      My guardian angel had not been asleep at the switch.
    • 1974 November 15, S. D. Isard, “Review of Computer Models of Thought and Language”, in Science, volume 186, number 4164, page 625:
      It is sometimes difficult to guess whether a sentence has been garbled by the author or the typesetter […] . In either case, the editors were asleep at the switch.
    • 2003 October 13, Donald Bartlett, James Steele, “Asleep at the Switch”, in Time‎[1], archived from the original on 20 January 2011:
      Why America (but not Canada) failed to set up a needed synfuels industry.
    • 2026 January 13, Rachel Millard, Alice Hancock, Nic Fildes, quoting Geoffrey Pyatt, “How the west fell behind in green tech”, in Financial Times, Big Read, page 15:
      “We all were asleep at the switch as the Chinese government decided to prioritise these clean energy technologies as a matter of national industrial strategy,” says Geoffrey Pyatt, a former US assistant secretary of energy and diplomat now at the advisory firm McLarty Associates.

References

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