Socialists' election to lose?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Socialists' election to lose?

Anyways, the question of our concern here and now is “the Socialists’ to lose”. Socialists’ being a possessive pronoun suggests that this is as if to say the election is already theirs. But the emphasis at the end of the phrase “to lose” must not be ignored either – that means the election is not theirs to keep (only after the election and they win it, will it be theirs to keep) but to lose.

In other words, they may not win it, after all.

To sum up, the full meaning of the idiom “it’s yours to keep” is this: you’ll very probably have it, unless you do something (really stupid) to lose it – or something (calamitous) just happens to take it away from you.

Similarly, it’s his/her/my/ours/yours/theirs to lose as well.

Here are more media examples.

1. Conventional wisdom seems to hold that Crystal Bowersox — the dreadlocked dynamo who has more or less dominated the ninth season of “American Idol” since day one — is the clear-cut front-runner and that the competition is hers to lose at this point.

Based on talent alone, you’d be hard-pressed to find many who would disagree with that assessment. But no matter how many times Simon Cowell repeats it, we all know that “Idol” isn’t merely “a singing competition.” More often than not, it’s the intangibles — stuff like likability, marketability and, uh, hunk-ability — that actually determine the winner of this thing.