Reader question:
What does this sentence – The defendant denied that he had touched the computer, but his fingerprints on the keyboard gave the game away – mean? Particularly, what does the expression "gave the game away" mean?
My comments:
The defendant said he did not touch the computer. But his fingerprints say otherwise – they were found on the keyboard, meaning that he did touch it. In other words, his fingerprints gave the secret away.
The expression "giving the game away" means just that, revealing a secret someone's been trying to hide. "The game" stands for the surprise element, the tricky or fun part of an activity, a scheme, a plan, a joke, etc.
The Longman dictionary defines the expression as "to spoil a surprise or secret by doing or saying something that lets someone guess what the secret is: Lynn game the game away by laughing when Kim walked in." In this example, Kim instantly knew they were planning some kind of mischief on him when Lynn laughed – she gave the game, the fun part of the game, away, thus failing the group.
Here are more examples from the media. Explanations (in brackets and perhaps redundant) are mine.
1. A telltale puff of radioactive gas may give the game away
AFTER 8 years of monitoring small earthquakes in the Dead Sea rift valley, Israeli seismologists report that the quakes were more likely to occur after a rise in emissions of the radioactive gas radon. Although the signal didn't occur before every quake, the researchers say the link is statistically significant - a controversial claim, as it is generally accepted that individual quakes are impossible to predict.
【Give the game away】相关文章:
最新
2020-09-15
2020-08-28
2020-08-21
2020-08-19
2020-08-14
2020-08-12