no leg to stand on
- idiom
- Informal
:
sin argumentos
- Unless there's a law forcing the citizens of this nation to participate in a National Day of Prayer, you (and that dishonorable federal judge) have no leg to stand on with your arguments.
Examples
-
(Maybe because Starr knows he can't make them stick, as he has no leg to stand on.)
Blog text (33) -
Without any evidence to support his claims, he had no leg to stand on in the debate.
-
When it came to justifying her actions, she found she had no leg to stand on in front of the committee.
-
The company faced serious legal issues and had no leg to stand on when defending its practices.
Antonyms
How Justified
22
5.7
10
4.2
595
2.7
176
3.9
69
1.0
8
6.7
- Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The expression relies on a physical-support metaphor: knowing 'no', 'leg', 'stand', and 'on' allows a learner to infer a lack of support or footing, so a B1 learner could guess the general idea of having no support. However, mapping that concrete image to the more specific abstract meaning 'no valid reason/justification' is metaphorical and partly idiomatic, so the relation is not fully predictable without some exposure.
Etymology
The idiom no leg to stand on comes from a simple image: if something has no leg to stand on, it cannot stay upright or be supported. So the phrase means 'to have no support or good reason'.