For example, if you lead a large group of friends to see the famous sunrise at Mount Taishan but, in spite of favorable weather forecast, during the middle of the night it starts to drizzle and the rain continues in the morning and all the way to noon. Your sunrise-watching extravaganza, in short, is washed out and the whole trip may feel like a damp squib, leaving everybody in disappointment and yourself slightly in shame and embarrassment.

Well, weather forecasts cannot always be right, can it?

Anyways, you get the point about “damp squib”. Here are a few more media examples:

1. Many phrases we use are often misquotes from Shakespeare and other traditional sayings – and people do not realise they have made mistakes.

Now a new poll has revealed a top ten of the most misquoted phrases in Britain.

Top of the league is a “damp squib”, a term for failure named after a dud 19th century explosive mining device, which is often mispronounced as “damp squid.”

Others in the chart include “one fell swoop” which was originally uttered by MacDuff in Shakespeare’s Macbeth but which is often mistakenly repeated as “one foul swoop”.

Another favourite is the Shakespearean quote from Merchant of Venice “all that glisters is not gold” which we misquote as “all the glitters is not gold”.

The misquote is so common it is now even used in the play itself.

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