pretty pass

pretty pass (plural pretty passes)

1. (dated) An unsatisfactory situation.
   • 1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 9, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC:

     "Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!"

   • 1900, John Buchan, chapter 29, in The Half-Hearted:

     The prisoner of unknown bandits, hurried he knew not whence, a pretty pass for an adventurer.

   • 1909, John Kendrick Bangs, chapter 3, in The Autobiography of Methuselah:

     When any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the old settlers as to what was or was not good form.

   • 2005 February 15, Edward Fennell, “New migrant rules prompt City firms to worry about their own staff”, in The Times, UK, retrieved 16 January 2014:

     Things have come to a pretty pass when a highly regarded City law firm does not know whether it is employing its own staff legally.

• Usually used in the expression "come to a pretty pass".