break a butterfly on a wheel
To apply an excessive amount of force to achieve something minor, unimportant, or insignificant. The phrase appears in the rhetorical question, "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" The line is a quotation from Alexander Pope's poem "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot." To "break upon a wheel" refers to a mode of torture, in which a victim has their bones broken while strapped to a large wheel. The government's use of drone strikes and artillery bombing on the town to wipe out a tiny faction of rebels is totally unjustifiable—who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? Why do these contractors always break a butterfly on a wheel? Like, hey, it's not OK to destroy the whole house just to upgrade the electrical wiring! That rogue military group broke a butterfly on a wheel when they started blowing up civilian areas.
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break a butterfly on a wheel
use unnecessary force in destroying something fragile or insignificant. In former times, breaking someone upon the wheel was a form of punishment or torture which involved fastening criminals to a wheel so that their bones would be broken or dislocated.
1998 Times But why break a butterfly upon a wheel? What harm does the Liberal Democrat leader do? Unfortunately he may be about to do a great deal.
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