packed in like sardines
packed (in) like sardines
Very tightly or snugly packed together, especially in a small space. We didn't want to take more than one car, so we had to drive for about four hours packed like sardines in Jeff's little sedan. Having a concert in our friends café was such a good idea! Sure, we were packed in like sardines, but everyone had a great time.
See also: like, packed, sardine
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
packed in like sardines
Extremely crowded, as in I could barely breathe-we were packed in like sardines. This term, alluding to how tightly sardines are packed in cans, has been applied to human crowding since the late 1800s.
See also: like, packed, sardine
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
packed in like sardines
Close together, crowded. Canned sardines are jammed together as tightly as practically any such object. The condition was transferred to human crowds by the late nineteenth century. Spike Milligan played with it in his poem “Sardines” (A Book of Milliganimals, 1968): “A baby Sardine saw her first submarine, She was scared and watched through a peephole, ‘O come, come, come, come,’ said the Sardine’s mum, ‘It’s only a tin full of people.’”
See also: like, packed, sardine
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- packed (in) like sardines
- packed like sardines
- squashed (in) like sardines
- packed
- sardine
- be packed (in) like sardines
- pack (someone or something) (in) like sardines
- pack like sardines
- be squashed (in) like sardines
- squash