74
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Accepted
What is mom-pkin?
In the popular Cinderella fairy tale, a fairy turns the poor and dirty Cinderella into a princess and a pumpkin into the carriage that will get her to the party she wants to attend.
The spell, ...
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46
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What does "Rabbit hole" mean?
Rabbit hole commonly refers to either an actual rabbit burrow where rabbits live, or, as an idiomatic phrase used in your Ted-Ed example, the hole Alice went down following the white rabbit in Alice ...
- 2,485
40
votes
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What does "One CPU is going to 'smoke' another CPU" mean?
You have it right; "smoke" can be used to mean "win" (or maybe even, "win easily," or "win decisively").
When talking about lopsided contests, frequently-used ...
J.R.♦
- 109k
40
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Is 'neon' used in daily life to refer to modern things?
Not in my experience, no.
The imagery I associate with “neon” is specifically neon lighting. It’s bright, it’s glary, it’s gaudy. It’s mainly used for business signage, so there’s an association with ...
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38
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unusual usage of bellowing
It's a misprint! The smoke billowed high into the sky.
See Lexico for definition and examples.
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What does "One CPU is going to 'smoke' another CPU" mean?
To smoke someone originally meant (and still does mean) to shoot them to death with a gun. The reference was to the smoke coming from the weapon's muzzle. This colorful term has come to mean "defeat ...
- 121k
31
votes
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Regarding a metaphor "Old Nick is not just lurking in the small print,"
"Old Nick" is a synonym for "the devil".
In this case, it has little to do with the rest of the article. The first line uses the idiom "the devil is in the details", ...
- 830
27
votes
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Help to understand: "leaders as diverse, patriotic, and big-hearted as the America…"
The phrase the America there refers to its people, not to the land mass.
It is a synonym for the citizenry (of America).
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24
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How would people use "cherry-pick"?
In this context, "cherry-picking" is a very negative term. This meaning comes from statistical analysis. The term is idiomatic and informal. It is not as negative as accusing someone of lying, but ...
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23
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How to understand: "The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying around"?
Both Eddie's and Enguroo's answers are correct, but neither say why.
The easiest way to compare two things is to put them next to each other and have a look. Hence, the idiom is derived from the act ...
- 6,136
18
votes
What is 'Arab Spring to Indian Winter' in the title?
The post's full title is Facebook’s fall from grace: Arab Spring to Indian winter.
'Fall from grace' is an idiom (going back to the Old Testament) for a loss of status, respect, or prestige.
The ...
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17
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What does "One CPU is going to 'smoke' another CPU" mean?
When I hear this expression, I think of two possible metaphors:
Two cars are drag racing on a dirt road. Carl's Camaro is much faster than Mary's Miata. The Camaro quickly gets ahead of the Miata....
- 24.1k
17
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What is mom-pkin?
In storytelling contexts, the words turned back into a will be, nine times out of ten, an allusion to the fairy tale known as Cinderella.
If you do an ngram search for turned back into a *, pumpkin ...
- 121k
17
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Is "sailed into" used as metaphor?
Yes - 'sailed in' is often used metaphorically, although in this specific example, it is probably as much of a pun as it is a metaphor.
"Sailed in" is sometimes used to describe an arrival ...
- 96.2k
17
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Is 'neon' used in daily life to refer to modern things?
No.
Neon, either means the chemical element, an inert gas. It therefore means the lights that use this gas to produces a bright red light. The lights can be made into curved tubes and used to spell ...
- 203k
16
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Meaning of "Chucking an ice cube into the path of a forest fire"?
... feels a bit like chucking an ice cube into the path of a forest fire.
feels a bit like frequently means a figure of speech follows.
chucking means throwing, but suggests lack of precision. So it ...
- 379
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What does "One CPU is going to 'smoke' another CPU" mean?
The New Oxford American Dictionary says:
3 [ with obj. ] informal kill (someone) by shooting.
• defeat overwhelmingly in a fight or contest.
That's a pretty exact definition; I have nothing to add ...
- 319
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rollover -- what does this word mean in the following context?
Have you ever seen a car with a mechanical odometer?
Many cars and trucks built during the 1960s had odometers that showed mileages between 0.0 miles and 99,999.9 miles. The odometers were connected ...
- 24.1k
16
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How to understand: "The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying around"?
You are right. In this sentence the author compares owls to rumors (one of the meanings of next to is in comparison with).
If some ideas, accusations, remarks or rumors are flying around, they are ...
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15
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Accepted
What does the nutshell in “in a nutshell” stand for?
The shell of a nut tends to be small and compact, which is why "in a nutshell" is used to mean "in a few words," or, more literally, "in a compact statement."
According to Wiktionary, the etymology ...
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What does the nutshell in “in a nutshell” stand for?
I think that by definition, idioms have to be understood in their entirety; the meaning of the idiom does not necessarily correspond to the meaning of the individual words.
However, a nutshell is the ...
- 40.8k
15
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Accepted
What does 'straphanger' mean in this dialogue?
"Straphanger" seems to have a different, and negative connotation in current US military parlance. Since this is a militarily-oriented movie, it is probably the definition that applies.
In an ...
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Regarding a metaphor "Old Nick is not just lurking in the small print,"
In the West, Old Nick is a religious reference to the devil in Christianity.
GEORGE FILE, Old Nick, the Devil, c. 1937
Small print is text printed smaller, usually in order to lessen its importance (...
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13
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What does "Rabbit hole" mean?
The idiomatic expression, a "rabbit hole" is a reference to Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". Its modern meaning is a detour from your work efforts that will require a great deal of time and ...
- 860
13
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What does "step on the brakes" mean in this context?
The US Federal Reserve (FED) is mandated to maintain inflation within a targeted band. As economic activity increases, the risk of inflation also increases. By slowing down the economy, the risk of ...
- 66.2k
13
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Is 'neon' used in daily life to refer to modern things?
The title Neon Genesis Evangelion is in Greek, not English. One way to translate it is, “Creation of New Gospels.” The word neon by itself is the plural neuter genitive of the Greek word for “new.” (...
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Barking up a tree ("barking up the wrong tree")
Here is a dog who is barking:
"Drooker style dog" by Balthazar, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0
Here is a dog who is barking up a tree:
"Treeing Fiest" by Scochran4, licensed CC-BY 3.0
There is an animal in ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible