A: How’re things doing with your brother’s startup?

    B: With scarcely any funding and a staff of six, they operate on a wing and a prayer.

    Note: This idiom means “in a difficult situation, relying on meager resources and luck to get out of it.” It originally referred to an airplane with a wing injured. In the 1942 film “The Flying Tigers,” John Wayne’s character Captain Jim Gordon says this in a reference to the flight of replacement pilots:

    Gordon: Any word on that flight yet?

    Rangoon hotel clerk: Yes sir, it was attacked and fired on by Japanese aircraft. She’s coming in on one wing and a prayer.

    The phrase was taken up by songwriters Harold Adamson and Jimmie McHugh and their WWII patriotic song “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer.” The phrase hit a chord with the public and there are many references to it in U.S. newspapers from 1943 onwards. It was taken up by Hollywood and a film — “Wing and a Prayer” — was released in 1944.