With a flea in your ear In english explanation

The meaning, explanation, definition and origin of the idiom/phrase "with a flea in your ear", English Idiom Dictionary ( also found in Vietnamese )

author Tommy Tran calendar 2021-01-05 06:01

Meaning of With a flea in your ear

With a flea in your ear British phrase informal

A harsh reproof or rebuke

I'll be sure to put a flea in your ear, if you keep repeating the same mistake.

If that kid cries one more time, I'll send him back to his parents with a flea in his ear.

My mother gave me a flea in my ear over my eating habits.

Other phrases about:

The author of your own misfortune
to be blamed because of one's own problem
Just Fell Off the Turnip Truck

Used to describe someone who is naive, gullible, inexperienced, easily fooled, ignorant, unsophisticated, etc.

send (one) away with a flea in (one's) ear

A severe criticism or rebuke that's used to dismiss someone

cover (one's) back

If you cover your back, you foresee you being accused of or blamed for bad consequences and do something to avoid that.

sing like a canary

To provide the police or authorities with information to expose someone’s wrongdoings

Origin of With a flea in your ear

Guillaume de Deguileville. (Image Source: Pinterest)

The phrase first appeared in 1426 in John Lydgate’s The Pilgrimage of the Life of the Manhood, which was a translation of a work by the French Cistercian monk, Guillaume de Deguileville. Deguilville used it to denote the spiritual emotion that is evoked by beholding great wonders. And in more modern times the French use their version of the expression to denote having doubts about someone. However, English speakers tended to concentrate on the physical discomforts that having a flea in your ear can cause and have used it in that figurative sense through the centuries.

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to look like a drowned rat

To be very wet

Example:

Because of forgetting bringing an umbrella, I look like a drowned rat when it rains.

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