family silver
1
6.9
- noun
- Informal
:
plata familiar
Examples
-
The word alone is enough to make me check my wallet and lock up the family silver."
Fiction book (1993) -
Yes, he has smashed the piggy bank and sold the family silver.
-
In Italy, where I lived for some time, quarrels often outlive the quarrellers and are passed on to the next generation like so much family silver.
Fiction book (1993) -
He inherited the family silver, which had been passed down through generations.
-
She carefully polished the family silver before the holiday dinner, as it was a cherished heirloom.
-
During the auction, several pieces of the family silver were sold for a considerable amount.
Synonyms
54
7.0
A valuable object kept in a family and given from parents to children for many generations
19
4.7
An object of value passed down in a family from parents to children
Surface Forms
Morphology
family + silver
The parts 'family' and 'silver' transparently suggest silver items belonging to a family, so a learner can guess a literal connection, but the conventionalized sense 'valuable possessions passed down as heirlooms' requires cultural knowledge that silver objects function as inherited valuables. Because the idiomatic extension to general heirlooms is not fully predictable from the constituents and may vary cross-linguistically, a B1 learner who only knows the words is unlikely to infer the full meaning reliably.
Etymology
The phrase family silver comes from old homes where a family's best silver plates and cups were kept as special items for important occasions. These things were 'passed down' from parents to children, so the phrase now means the valuable possessions a family keeps as 'heirlooms'.