Meaning & Analysis
To be moved repeatedly and haphazardly from one place, person, or authority to another, without respite or stability.
Insights
Instability and Displacement
The proverb metaphorically describes a state of continual movement or upheaval, where one is passed around with little care—whether through bureaucratic indifference, social neglect, or personal misfortune.
Lack of Agency
It also signifies being subject to forces beyond one’s control, illustrating the helplessness of those who are shuffled or ‘tossed’ about by the whims of others or by circumstance.
Systemic Neglect
The phrase is often used to expose how individuals or their concerns are handled with disregard, as in bureaucracies or systems where no one takes responsibility, and the sufferer is endlessly redirected.
Historical Symbolism
Originally, ‘pillar’ and ‘post’ referred to fixed structures—pillars of public buildings and posts marking boundaries or public spaces. The phrase may have gained additional resonance from associations with punishment (‘pillory’), intensifying the sense of public exposure and vulnerability.
Literary and Cultural Resonance
Appearing frequently from the early 16th century onward—including in Shakespeare—this proverb has been used in literature, legal discourse, and everyday speech as a vivid emblem of bureaucratic frustration and human powerlessness.
Psychological Dimensions
The phrase captures the psychological toll of instability: confusion, frustration, and exhaustion born of endless transition and lack of resolution.
Rhetorical Devices
Alliteration
The repeated ‘p’ sound in ‘pillar’ and ‘post’ adds rhythmic emphasis and memorability to the phrase.
Imagery
The proverb conjures the vivid image of a helpless object (or person) being batted back and forth, much like a ball in a game—making the sense of chaos and powerlessness palpable.
Antithesis
By setting ‘pillar’ and ‘post’ in opposition, the phrase underlines the endless oscillation between alternatives, with no final destination.
Transcription
Quotations
From poste vnto piller tossed shalt thou be.
That from piller vnto post The powr man he was tost.
And turmoyleth alway fro pyler to post.
And from post to piller, wyfe, I haue been tost By that surfet.
Tost from post to pyller.
Thus in hurly burly from piller to poste, Poore Haphazard daily was toste.
Hee was . . tossed from poste to piller, like an espial or runnagate.
And though from piller tost he be to poste, When All him leaue, yet Care with him doth stay.
Ech day, ech houre, yea, every minute tost, Like to a tennis ball, from piller to post.
This light sex is tumbled and tossed from post to pillar.
In the tyme of her sister Queene Maries raigne, how was shee handled? tost from piller to post, imprisoned, sought to be put to death.
Toss'd from post to pillory.
(post to pillory).
(post to pillar).
From Pillar to Post, from Constable to Constable.
Shakespeare Citations
Whose doughty dismal fame . . from post to pillar, Is blown abroad.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.