house of cards

A plan, organization, or other entity that is destined to fail due to a weak structure or foundation (likened to a literal house of cards, which is built by balancing playing cards against one another, and is very easily toppled). Greg decided against investing in the new technology company because he got the feeling that it was a house of cards. So your plan is to just cram and miraculously get good grades on all of your exams? That sounds like a real house of cards to me!

A weak and fragile structure, plan, or organization, as in Her scheme to reorganize the school sounds like another house of cards, or Jerry built his entire business on what turned out to be a house of cards. This metaphoric expression alludes to the structure made by balancing playing cards against one another. [First half of 1600s]

COMMON If you describe a system, organization, or plan as a house of cards, you mean that it is likely to fail or collapse. This government could fall apart like a house of cards during the first policy discussion. When he left the company, the whole house of cards collapsed. She knows that the cosy family relationships of the past were a house of cards, based on unstable foundations. Note: This refers to the building of an elaborate but unstable pyramid structure using playing cards.

A weak, insubstantial construction, plan, or organization. Building “houses” by balancing upright playing cards against one another surely dates from the earliest days of paper or cardboard playing cards, which in Europe was the late Middle Ages (earlier in China). Likening a precarious structure to a “house of cards” presumably began soon afterward. An elegant use of the metaphor came in John Milton’s Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline (1641): “Painted Battlements of Prelatry, which want but one puff of the King’s to blow them down like a past-board House built of Court-Cards.”