Mother Hubbard's cupboard
1
9.9
- noun
- Archaic
:
armario vacío
- After a long week of eating takeout, my fridge felt like Mother Hubbard's cupboard with nothing but a few old condiments left.
Examples
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When I checked the pantry after the kids' snack time, it resembled Mother Hubbard's cupboard because they had eaten everything.
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The volunteers found Mother Hubbard's cupboard at the community center, as there were hardly any food supplies left to distribute.
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The peanut butter and jelly shelves at the Bristol Emergency Food Pantry were as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboards.
Blog text (17) -
Immediate and frenzied unloading of said goods ensued by the three of them in hopes of finding some tasty breakfast items (our pantry having become akin to Mother Hubbard's Cupboard).
Blog text (5)
Surface Forms
Morphology
This phrase is an allusive reference to the nursery rhyme 'Old Mother Hubbard' and its empty cupboard; knowing 'mother', a surname 'Hubbard', and 'cupboard' does not allow a learner to infer the conventional meaning 'completely empty of food/supplies'. The meaning is culturally specific and idiomatic rather than compositional, so a B1 learner who knows the parts but not the reference would not reliably understand it.
Etymology
Mother Hubbard's cupboard comes from an old children's rhyme where Mother Hubbard opens her cupboard to find nothing inside when she wants to give her dog a bone. Because the cupboard is empty in the story, the phrase now means a place with 'no food' or 'nothing left'.