caught with someone's pants down
2
9.5
- idiom
- Informal
:
sorprendido desprevenido
- The company was caught with its pants down when the auditors arrived unexpectedly.
- get caught with someone's pants down
Examples
-
I've just been caught with my pants down.
-
I heard Raymo got caught with his pants down last night.
-
"I almost felt as if I were the one who had been caught with my pants down.
Fiction book (1990) -
Then they are caught with their pants down.
Blog text (14) -
I almost got caught with my pants down this morning, with all my short positions.
-
They've been caught with their pants down.
Blog text (9) -
Paterson was caught with his pants down doing wrong, which is why he said he wouldn't run.
Blog text (29) -
We've seen it time and time again, especially in recent years: government agencies caught with their pants down, scratching their heads and bumbling around at the foot of a disaster.
Blog text (14) -
She was caught with her pants down after forgetting to prepare her presentation for the meeting.
-
He got caught with his pants down when his co-workers revealed his surprise party plans early.
Synonyms
5
3.7
Someone finds a person while they are doing something wrong
A rude way to say someone is in an embarrassing situation and unprepared
Antonyms
How Embarrassed
Surface Forms
Morphology
catch + with + someone's + pant + down
The phrase evokes the literal image of someone’s trousers lowered, which naturally signals embarrassment or vulnerability, so a learner who knows the words can often infer the sense ‘found unprepared’. However, the usage is idiomatic and culturally rooted (the construction and figurative shift from the literal image to ‘caught unprepared’) so the exact pragmatic meaning and register may not be fully predictable to a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
The idiom caught with someone's pants down comes from the image of a person whose pants are literally pulled down, leaving them surprised and embarrassed. So it means being found 'unprepared' or 'exposed'.