A dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms and Collocations

pin back one’s ears • pin back someone’s ears
pin back one’s ears —
1
. (UK sl.) listen attentively: Pin back
your ears, people, this is quite a story! 2. (Sport) give the game
the necessary degree of effort: Dafydd had a big game, even
if he didn’t pin back his ears and finish one or two moves as
he should have done.
pin back someone’s ears —(U.S. sl.) rebuke a person severely:
When a man pays you a heavy-handed compliment, do you
smile graciously or pin back his ears with a sharp quip?
pin someone on the ropes • put someone up to the
ropes
pin someone on the ropes —(Boxing ) force an opponent back
on to the ropes: Referee Brimmell stepped in to save Scot after
the challenger had pinned him on the ropes for fully a minute.
put someone up to the ropes —make a person understand the
way to do smth.: Our pilot allowed me to spend part of the
time with him on the bridge and put me up to the ropes. Cf.:
know the ropes — be familiar with a particular kind of work:
You won’t have to train the new computer operator; she already
knows the ropes.
pink elephant • white elephant
pink elephant—
1
. (usually in the phrase “see a pink elephant”)
said of a visionary hallucination caused by over-indulgence in
alcohol: Ben had been extremely (to the pink elephant sighting
stage) drunk after he had been forced to take command. 2. a
problem that everyone knows well but no one talks about
because it is embarrassing: It’s like there’s a pink elephant in
the room that no one wants to acknowledge. How long can
you go before someone says something or does something?
white elephant—a possession or piece of property that is
useless or unwanted, especially one that is inconvenient or
expensive to keep: The automobile was a large Mercedes-Benz:
I kept it a week or so but it was so heavy that it was a “white
elephant” on country roads. Cf.: white elephant sale — a sort of
odds and ends sale on people’s front yard at bargain-basement
prices: A few weeks back I found some signed paintings at a
white elephant sale. They were just $3 each…