Old Gooseberry
- noun
- Archaic
:
entrometido
- She accused her neighbor of being an Old Gooseberry for constantly asking personal questions.
Examples
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After dinner, the family gathered to enjoy a round of Old Gooseberry before bed.
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My neighbor is an Old Gooseberry who always wants to know our business.
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During the meeting, Tom couldn't resist playing Old Gooseberry and offering unsolicited advice.
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Don't be such an Old Gooseberry in our discussions!
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My neighbor is an Old Gooseberry who always wants to know our business.
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During the meeting, Tom couldn't resist playing Old Gooseberry and offering unsolicited advice.
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She accused her neighbor of being an Old Gooseberry for constantly asking personal questions.
Surface Forms
Morphology
old + Gooseberry
The literal constituents 'old' (age/affection) plus 'gooseberry' (a fruit) do not compose to yield the meanings 'someone who meddles' or a specific card game; the phrase is dialectal/idiomatic and its sense cannot be predicted from the parts. A B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer the idiomatic senses, so the expression is opaque.
Etymology
Old Gooseberry may come from an old card game where the player left with one unwanted card was called the gooseberry, like the odd person who spoils the round. People then used that image to call a nosy or interfering person an Old Gooseberry. So it came to mean 'a person who meddles' and also stayed as the name of a traditional 'card game'.
