in a jam

In a troublesome situation. I'm in a bit of a jam—I accidentally made plans with two different men tonight! We're in a jam now because the hotel gave our room away!

Fig. in(to) a difficult situation. Mary cannot keep track of the many times Dave got himself into a jam. I found myself in a jam when my car overheated on the highway.

When hard-pressed. The British version of this expression, “at a pinch,” dates from the fifteenth century, when William Caxton in his translation of The Book of Faytes of Armes and of Chyualrye (1489) wrote, “Corageously at a pynche [he] shal renne vpon hem.” By the time Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Black Arrow (1888) it also was put as, “It yet might serve him, in a pinch.” A related expression of more recent provenance is in a jam, which similarly implies that one is “compressed” or “squeezed,” by circumstance, into a tight spot.