run it up the flagpole
Meaning: to test an idea; to present something for approval or feedback.
Language: English
Literally: to run it up the flagpole
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Advertising jargon from 1950s Madison Avenue, and the original was a full sentence used as a stock joke: run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it. It circulated as a specimen of agency-speak — the kind of line writers put in the mouths of ad executives to mark them as fluent in a language of confident nonsense — and it appears in that satirical role in American film and fiction of the mid-1950s. The image underneath is sound enough to have outlived the mockery: raising a flag commits you to nothing, costs almost nothing, and yet tells you immediately whether anyone is prepared to stand behind it, which is exactly what floating a proposal informally is meant to establish.
More idioms — Daily Life
- To steal someone's thunder — To take credit for another's idea or upstage their big moment.
- Die Kirche im Dorf lassen — To keep things in proportion and not get carried away.
- Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof — Life is not all fun and games; expect hardship.
- Estar de Rodríguez — To be a husband left working in town while the family is on holiday.
- Ogni morte di papa — Extremely rarely; once in a blue moon.
- 油を売る (Abura ouru) — To slack off or dawdle when you should be working.
More English idioms
- knock on wood — to seek good fortune; to ward off bad luck.
- pull someone's leg — To joke or tease someone by telling them something untrue.
- Mad as a hatter — Completely eccentric or unhinged.
- To turn a blind eye — To deliberately ignore something you know is wrong.
- Hair of the dog — A morning drink taken to cure a hangover.
- To bite the bullet — To face something painful with gritted courage.
From our compliments & insults
- Schlaumeier — A smart aleck or know-it-all.
- 石頭 (Ishiatama) — A stubborn, inflexible person who won't budge.
- Tu as du chien — You have a certain irresistible magnetism — a je-ne-sais-quoi that draws people in.