be left on the shelf

You're going to be left on the shelf if you don't watch out.

The issue, however, is far too important to be left on the shelf to gather dust.

Although only 26, she said she was already worried about being left on the shelf.

I thought I was left on the shelf, there being so few men to go round after the war.

I couldn't afford to risk being left on the shelf once Karen had had her way with me.

The feeling that she had been left on the shelf preoccupied her and made her unresponsive in company.

The beans had obviously been left on the shelf for a couple of years, and no amount of cooking would make them tender.

She didn't want to be left on the shelf, resigned to dull evenings with her stepfather's account books.

Surely a lovely lass such as yourself doesn't wish to be left on the shelf."

The saga centres on the tangled love life of a 30-year-old woman, who fears she will be left on the shelf.

The song was left on the shelves following the release of What's Going On.

Lots of girls married in haste and repented at leisure then because they were afraid of being left on the shelf.

In those days, spinsterhood was seen as a mark of personal inadequacy, and I, as they probably all realized, was being left on the shelf.

"Focusing so much on a line which benefits a small number of passengers just isn't fair when other good projects are being left on the shelf."

Wintery foods such as soups and steak-and-kidney pies were left on the shelf, with sales plummeting.

Phineas noticed for the first time that the kenderkarter had cleared away what was left on the shelves in the waiting room.

All that was left on the shelves that bleak, snowy afternoon were paper doilies and a few boxes of prepackaged chocolates.

We know that lipstick sales soar during a recession because it's an inexpensive feel-good purchase, but lipgloss deserves to be left on the shelf.

The Schwarzschild solution had been left on the shelf for a generation, and now the Oppenheimer results were in their turn regarded with no more than mild interest.

Of course, you may have hooked up with some weirdo because you were so terrified of being left on the shelf, but that's what divorce was invented for.

Weeks later, a session held on June 30 was dedicated to recording new versions of "Blowin' in the Wind," but those recordings were left on the shelf.

André Previn, then conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, said that if the newfound compositions were genuine, they would best have been left on the shelf.

But many of the 1,058 suggestions have been left on the shelf, and the city's official report on the open house - printed in February but never released - helps explain why.

Following the success of the telemovie shown on Mother's Day 1996 the Nine Network board agreed to commission a 22 episode series, but the project was left on the shelf for four years.

Tarkovsky had tremendous problems with the Soviet cinema bureaucracy (but he certainly wasn't alone in this) but managed to make his films even though some were left on the shelf for a number of years.