use a sledgehammer to crack a nut

ˌjuːz‿ə ˈslɛd͡ʒhæmə tə ˌkɹæk‿ə ˈnʌt

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#1·4h ago

(intransitive, Australia, Britain, New Zealand, idiomatic, informal) To use disproportionate or significantly excessive force to carry out an action; to do something overzealously.

This last mentioned consideration involves the concept in Community law (derived principally from German law) called "proportionality". In plain English it means "You must not use a steam hammer to crack a nut, if a nutcracker would do."

Origin: The analogy dates back to at least the middle of the 19th century: see, for example, this quotation from Levi Carroll Judson’s work Sages and Heroes of the American Revolution (1851): “He at once became the nucleus around which a band of patriots gathered and formed a nut too hard to be cracked by the sledgehammer of monarchy.”. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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