beat breast

beat your breast

to publicly pretend that you feel sad or guilty Managers are beating their breasts about the loss of 50 jobs, but staff suspect more redundancies are on the way.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Lambert	LAHM-bert (German), LAHM-bərt (Dutch), lam-BER (French), LAM-bərt (English)	German, Dutch, French, English, Ancient Germanic
Xia	-	Chinese
Elanor	-	Literature
Adriano	ahd-RYAH-no (Italian)	Italian, Portuguese
Filbert	-	Eastern African
Theodotus	-	Ancient Greek (Latinized)