Englisha bone to pick
Meaning: A dispute.
Example: “I have a bone to pick with you about the dishes you left in the sink.”
Equivalents in other languages
Dutch: Een appeltje met iemand te schillen hebben Literally: To have a little apple to peel with someone
Norwegian: Å ha en høne å plukke med noen Literally: To have a hen to pluck with someone
French: Avoir maille à partir avec quelqu'un Literally: To have a maille to divide with someone
Origin: In use since the 1500s, drawn from the image of a dog gnawing every last scrap of meat off a bone — a slow, absorbing task that occupies the animal completely until it's finished. Applied to a person, having "a bone to pick" first meant taking on a tedious, time-consuming matter that needed working through. The now more common sense, having a grievance to settle with someone, only developed later, by the 1800s, likely drawn from a second canine image: two dogs fighting over the same bone, which is also the source of the related phrase "a bone of contention."
More English idioms
- do an about-face To change one's behavior or mind abruptly and (often) apparently without reason.
- down in the mouth Unhappy.
- eat one's heart out To suffer silently in a hopeless situation.
- eat out of someone's hand To be submissive; to have someone eating out of one's hand means to get someone to be sub…
- fight tooth and nail To fight fiercely; to fight with everything you have.
- fine-tooth comb An imaginary device one uses to look for something very carefully.
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Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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