sackcloth and ashes

1. 1.

   a display of extreme remorse or repentance or grief

   Broaderdisplay

Questions about sackcloth and ashes

What does sackcloth and ashes mean?

sackcloth and ashes means "a display of extreme remorse or repentance or grief".

Is sackcloth and ashes a common word?

sackcloth and ashes is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.