at the mercy of

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at the mercy of

1. (idiomatic) In the power of; defenceless/defenseless against.

   The ball game is scheduled for Saturday, but we're still at the mercy of the weather.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.

   • 2024 March 20, Richard Foster, “Vital experience in an open-air classroom”, in RAIL, number 1005, page 60:

     Most of Britain's railways were built in the Victorian era. Railway routes were not only at the mercy of geography, but also of local landowners who wanted to minimise the impact on their estates. Construction was carried out by navvies armed with picks and shovels, with very little understanding of the underlying geology.