Word.ws English Dictionary

ambulance at the bottom of a cliff

ambulance at the bottom of a cliff noun: a futile or post factum answer to a problem.

Noun

ambulance at the bottom of a cliff

  1. (derogatory, figuratively) A futile or post factum answer to a problem.
    • Funny place for the social, for the insects to start caring / Just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff1994, “Yes”, in The Holy Bible, performed by Manic Street Preachers
    • A school with a poor intake is like an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff: sometimes, it can pick up the children and patch up the damage; most of the time, it's too late.1999 September 14, Nick Davies, “Crisis, crisis, crisis: the state of our schools”, in The Guardian

Origin of ambulance at the bottom of a cliff

A variation on the Joseph Malins' 1895 poem "The ambulance down in the valley," where the need for an ambulance would be removed by a fence on the cliff.

Questions about ambulance at the bottom of a cliff

What does ambulance at the bottom of a cliff mean?
Ambulance at the bottom of a cliff means a futile or post factum answer to a problem.
What part of speech is ambulance at the bottom of a cliff?
Ambulance at the bottom of a cliff is a noun.

Words near ambulance at the bottom of a cliff in the dictionary

  1. ambulacrarians
  2. ambulacriform
  3. ambulacrum
  4. ambulacrums
  5. ambulance
  6. ambulance at the bottom of a cliff
  7. ambulance chaser
  8. ambulance chasers
  9. ambulance chasing
  10. ambulance cover
  11. ambulance covers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ambulance at the bottom of a cliff (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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