to carry coals to Newcastle
- idiom
- UK
:
llevar leña al monte
- Trying to explain basic math to a professor is like carrying coals to Newcastle.
Examples
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Offering more chocolate to a pastry chef would be carrying coals to Newcastle.
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Bringing your own sand to the beach is essentially carrying coals to Newcastle.
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It's pointless to carry coals to Newcastle.
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Why would anyone carry coals to Newcastle?
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Bringing your own sand to the beach is essentially carrying coals to Newcastle.
-
Offering more chocolate to a pastry chef would be carrying coals to Newcastle.
-
Trying to explain basic math to a professor is like carrying coals to Newcastle.
How Useful
50
2.4
947
1.0
- UK
300
1.6
728
1.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal parts ('carry', 'coals', 'Newcastle') are transparent individually, but the idiomatic sense depends on cultural/historical knowledge that Newcastle was already supplied with coal; without that background a B1 learner would not infer the meaning 'to do something superfluous'. Because the expression relies on a specific cultural reference rather than regular compositional rules, it is not derivable from its constituents.
Etymology
The idiom carry coals to Newcastle comes from the simple picture of taking coals to Newcastle, a city famous for coal. If you carry coal to a place that already has plenty, it is pointless, so the phrase means 'unnecessary'.