devil take the hindmost

• Devil take the hindmost
• the Devil take the hindmost, the devil take the hindmost

devil take the hindmost

1. An imprecation that everyone should look after their own interests, leaving those who cannot cope to whatever fate befalls them.
   • c. 1608–1610 (date written), Francis Beaumont, Iohn Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies a Bleeding. , 4th edition, London: VV J for Richard Hawkins, , published 1634, →OCLC, Act V, page 66:

     What if a toy take um ith heeles now, and they runn all away, and cry the Divell take the hindmoſt.

   • 1742, James Oglethorpe, “Letter to the Honorable Trustees”, in Lucian Lamar Knight, Kenneth Coleman, Milton Ready, editors, The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, volume 23, published 1914:

     Land Alianable which would bring in the Stock Jobbing Temper, the Devill take the Hindmost.

   • 1786, Robert Burns, Address to a Haggis:

     Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
     Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
     Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
     Are bent like drums;
     The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
     ‘Bethankit’ hums.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “Two Centuries”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker), page 170:

     And [we] coldly see the all-conquering valiant Sons of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille, as if this were Nature’s Law;—mumbling to ourselves some vague janglement of Laissez-faire, Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one nexus of man to man: Free-trade, Competition, and Devil take the hindmost, our latest Gospel yet preached!

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter CVIII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 572:

     "Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."

   • 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Love Never Dies, Song nr. 22

     "Choose your hand, try your best. He who wins, wins it all. Devil take the hindmost."

• every man for himself