rob Peter to pay Paul love

rob Peter to pay Paul

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb idiomatic To use resources that legitimately belong to or are needed by one party in order to satisfy a legitimate need of another party, especially within the same organization or group; to solve a problem in a way that makes another problem worse, producing no net gain.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The expression refers to times before the Reformation when Church taxes had to be paid to St. Paul's church in London and to St. Peter's church in Rome; originally it referred to neglecting the Peter tax in order to have money to pay the Paul tax.

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Examples

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