couch potato
11
4.3
- noun
- /ˈkaʊtʃ pəˈteɪtoʊ/
- Informal
:
teleadicto
- After a long week of work, she often becomes a couch potato, enjoying a weekend filled with binge-watching her favorite shows.
So really in the animal studies, the control group is couch potatoes.
- So really in the animal studies, the control group is couch potatoes.
- They'd lie down here in bed, snoring and being a couch potato.
- No, I'm talking about like things you don't prefer to do, like if you're a person like a couch potato.
- But for the most part she's a couch potato and we work from home and we just, we're always chilling.
- Then lying down here in bed, snoring and being a couch potato.
- Like all the peoples who had the hot take of your, your, you know, you're, you're wimping out, are all couch potatoes.
Examples
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And my dad used to work at the paper mill, but then he had an accident, so now he's a full-time couch potato.
-
No one makes money from the couch potato if all they do is consume entertainment without consuming products.
Blog text (32) -
"I will probably be a couch potato."
Academic text (2003) -
I become the couch potato.
Academic text (2008) -
We're gonna be your couch potatoes.
Fiction book (2001) -
The human being is called a "couch potato."
-
Oh, can't we just be couch potatoes all day?
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Russell's also a couch potato.
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Of course, there are geniuses who are also couch potatoes, but not many.
Blog text (27) -
A school nurse summed up fellow participants' perspectives by stating, "Children are becoming like couch potatoes at an early age of watching television, and they are just not getting enough physical activity."
Academic text (2013)
Synonyms
1
7.8
A person who watches many TV episodes in a short time
1
5.8
A person who often rests and does very little
1
7.2
A person who avoids work and prefers to rest
How Active
Surface Forms
Morphology
couch + potato
The meaning is motivated by combining 'couch' (sofa) with 'potato' (an inert vegetable) to create a metaphor for a person who sits around and is inactive, so there is a visible figurative link to the constituents. However, this metaphorical mapping is culturally specific and not fully predictable from the literal meanings, so a B1 learner who knows the words may not reliably infer the idiomatic sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
Couch potato comes from a simple picture: a person so still on the couch they look like a round potato. One popular story says old cartoons showed this image to make fun of people who watched TV all day, so the phrase now means 'a person who sits a lot and does little exercise'.