Don't have a leg to stand on

Posted by ESC October 11, 2008 at 13:32In reply to Don't have a leg to stand on posted by Karen on October 10, 2008 at 09:51:

Where did the idiom "you don't have a leg to stand on" come from?

Literally from a person's legs. "An excuse; a chance to get away with it. Used negatively, in phrases like 'not have a leg to stand on' and 'without a leg to stand on." From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable revised by John Ayto (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 2005, Seventeenth Edition). Page 807.