lead someone up the garden path
Meaning: To deceive someone, keeping them hopeful along the way.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “The dealership led us up the garden path about the delivery date.”
Category: Nature
Origin: The image is of a suitor leading someone on a pleasant garden walk while intending something else. The British phrase is recorded from the early 20th century.
Equivalents in other languages
- Russian: Водить за нос (Vodit' za nos) — literally: To lead by the nose
- Polish: Robić kogoś w konia — literally: To make someone into a horse
- Hungarian: Lóvá tesz valakit — literally: To make a horse of someone
- Russian: вводить в заблуждение (vvodit' v zabluzhdenie) — literally: to put into delusion
More idioms — Nature
- let the grass grow under one's feet — To waste time and miss opportunities.
- go through fire and water — To face any danger or hardship for someone or something.
- the eye of the storm — The center of a crisis; sometimes a brief calm in the middle of it.
- fight fire with fire — To respond to an attack with the same methods.
- in broad daylight — Openly, during the day, when anyone could see.
- wish the ground would swallow one up — To feel so embarrassed that one wants to disappear.
More English idioms
- packed like sardines — Crowded very tightly together.
- give someone the runaround — To put someone off with excuses instead of a straight answer.
- pin the blame on someone — To make someone take responsibility for a fault, often unfairly.
- a closed book — Something one knows nothing about, or someone impossible to understand.
- up to one's ears in debt — Deeply in debt.
- hand on heart — Said when swearing that something is completely true.