Fell into the right hands

Posted by Iori on August 07, 2007

In Reply to: Fell into the right hands posted by ChrisA on August 05, 2007

: : Hi, this is my first post... I would be grateful if someone could answer my question!

: : I watched Angelina Joli's interview on YouTube last night, and she said 'everything fell into the right hands' when she was taking about the film 'Mighty Heart'.

: : Is that a common way of using the idiom 'something falls into --- hands'? Or is 'something falls into the wrong hands' more usual, perhaps?

: Context would be useful here, Oiri. It is, as you say, more usual to refer to something falling into 'the wrong hands' but it would usually be a specific thing or things, not 'everything'. Possibly there were several things, any one of which could have fallen into the wrong hands; in which case 'everything fell into the right hands' might be a pretty elegant way of saying none of the things in question ended up in the wrong hands.

: Then, of course, the words could have a straightforward rather than an idiomatic meaning. 'Everything (ie all the things I've just mentioned) fell into the right hands(ie went to the people I wanted them to go to)."

Thank you for your help! This is a great site also for a non-native speaker like me. Cheers, I