square peg in a round hole

From the fact that a square peg fits poorly in a round hole.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /skwɛə ˌpɛɡ ɪn‿ə ɹaʊnd ˈhəʊl/, /skwɛː-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /skwɛəɹ ˌpɛɡ ɪn‿ə ɹaʊnd ˈhoʊl/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊl

square peg in a round hole (plural square pegs in round holes)

1. (idiomatic) Someone or something that does not fit well or at all in a certain setting; a misfit; hence, someone or something that will not succeed in an endeavour, except possibly with much effort and force.

   Synonym: like a fish out of water

   • , 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II, page 352:

     ["]Now, your son's case is really your case—you see it through the medium of your likings and dislikings—and insist upon forcing a square peg into a round hole, because in a round hole you, being a round peg, feel tight and comfortable. Now I call that irrational." / "I don't see why my son has any right to fancy himself a square peg," said the farmer, doggedly, "when his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, have been round pegs; and it is agin' nature for any creature not to take after its own kind.["]]

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LIV, in The Moon and Sixpence, : Grosset & Dunlap Publishers , →OCLC, page 282:

     To these people, native and European, he was a queer fish, but they were used to queer fish, and they took him for granted; […] In England and France he was the square peg in the round hole, but here the holes were any sort of shape, and no sort of peg was quite amiss.

   • (Serial J-99-38), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 77:

     It is almost as if you have guidelines for putting a square peg into a square hole, but we are trying to apply those same guidelines to put a square peg into a round hole.]