dirt on someone
- idiom
- Informal
:
suciedad sobre alguien
- If you want a promotion, you better hope your boss doesn't find any dirt on you.
Examples
-
She threatened to go public with the dirt on her former employer.
-
The journalist claimed to have dirt on several politicians.
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Do you have any dirt on someone?
-
He found some dirt on someone during the investigation.
-
She threatened to reveal the dirt on her former employer if he didn't give her the raise.
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The detective uncovered damaging dirt on the suspect, which could jeopardize his career.
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If you have any dirt on the candidate, now is the time to share it with the committee.
Synonyms
135
4.8
Secret information that harms someone's reputation
22
5.3
Personal secrets that could cause embarrassment if made public
3
6.4
A secret from someone's past that can cause shame
1
7.9
Private family or personal matters that embarrass people if the public finds out
1
7.3
Rumours that try to hurt someone's reputation by spreading private facts
A set of secret bad facts about a person kept to use against them
An embarrassing secret from someone's past that they keep hidden
How Damaging
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun 'dirt' is used metaphorically to mean damaging or shameful material, so combining 'dirt' with 'on someone' plausibly maps to harmful information about a person; however, a B1 learner who only knows the concrete sense of 'dirt' (soil) may not reliably infer this idiomatic use. The meaning is a metaphorical extension rather than a literal composition and varies cross-linguistically, so it is partially but not fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Dirt on someone comes from the idea of real dirt or mud that stains a person. If someone has 'dirt' on you, they have something that makes you look bad, so the phrase means 'information that could embarrass or harm someone's reputation'.