to boil the ocean
- idiom
- Jargon
:
intentar abarcar demasiado
- We can't boil the ocean and solve all the company's problems at once; we need to focus on one issue at a time.
But he's like, I can't boil the ocean, but I can boil my pot.
- But he's like, I can't boil the ocean, but I can boil my pot.
- He says when you're in training, you don't have to as, as the proverb goes, boil the ocean.
- But like I said, it's going to boil the ocean if it's allowed, if it's not just blacked out page after page after page.
Examples
-
But he's like, I can't boil the ocean, but I can boil my pot.
-
Because when you try to boil the ocean, you don't.
-
Because when you try to boil the ocean, you don't.
-
But like I said, it's going to boil the ocean if it's allowed, if it's not just blacked out page after page after page.
-
It's unrealistic to expect one person to boil the ocean when there are so many tasks to tackle.
-
In trying to boil the ocean, she ended up overwhelmed by the project's demands.
Synonyms
58
3.6
Do something too much, more than needed
45
4.4
To do something more than is needed
19
6.3
To try to do more than you can handle and cause strain
8
6.6
To try to do more than you can and fail
To make a hard situation much worse by adding more problems
Try to do something that is very hard or impossible
Antonyms
How Ambitious
- Jargon
3
3.2
190
4.2
∞
1.3
∞
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The image of literally trying to 'boil the ocean' conveys an impossibly large or impractical task, so a learner who knows 'boil' and 'ocean' can often infer the general sense of attempting something overly ambitious. However, the meaning is metaphorical and requires inferential mapping rather than straightforward compositional rules, so it is not fully predictable for all B1 learners without prior exposure.
Etymology
Boil the ocean creates a simple picture: imagine trying to boil the whole ocean, a job no one could finish. So it means 'to try something impossible or to take on too much at once'.