He dug a hole?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

He dug a hole?

And from there the prisoner was supposed to serve out his sentence, be it a month, six months, a year and half, whatever.

Many died while in there, summer and winter, rain or shine, sometimes en masse.

Which is not very surprising, of course.

The long and short of it is, the idiom that someone has dug a hole for himself means, metaphorically, that he has done something wrong to put himself into a difficult position.

In other words, he’s in big trouble. And if the hole is too deep for him to climb out of, he’s doomed, as though he’d dug his own grave and perished therein – being buried alive.

Sports people often use this term to describe the situation where they trail opponents in points in the course of a match. A few days ago, for example, in the NBA, the American pro basketball league, the Phoenix Suns lost 102-91 to the San Antonio Spurs. The lost by 11 points, but at one time in the second quarter, they trailed by as many as 19. After the game, Suns coach Alvin Gentry addressed this 19-point hole they dug for themselves (Duncan helps Spurs improve to 9-0 at home, AP, January 16, 2017):

“You just can’t spot them 19, especially playing at home. It was an uphill battle from there. We gave ourselves an opportunity to make it interesting at the end but, you know, once again, we dug a hole and spent a whole lot of time trying to dig ourselves out of it.”