green as grass
1
7.5
- idiom
- Informal
:
inexperto
Examples
-
We was green as grass.
-
He was as green as grass.
-
The Captain and I examined it and found the meat as green as grass, and the effluvia from it was by no means pleasant to our olfactory nerves.
Academic text (1993) -
As a new employee, she was green as grass and made several rookie mistakes during her first week.
-
The young actress was still green as grass and struggled with performing in front of a large audience.
-
When he first started hiking, he was green as grass and knew very little about the equipment necessary for the trails.
Synonyms
312
4.1
Not experienced and too ready to trust others
99
5.8
Inexperienced and easily tricked
66
3.4
Not having much skill or practice
10
4.7
A person who has little experience of the world and seems naive
5
8.3
Not very experienced or confident yet
2
5.2
A person who is new and not yet experienced in a job or field
Not very experienced in a job or area
Lacking experience and trusting people too easily
Antonyms
How Inexperienced
Surface Forms
Morphology
Because 'green' already carries the meaning 'inexperienced' and 'as grass' functions as a simple simile intensifier (grass being vividly green), a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer the meaning 'very inexperienced.' The construction follows a common comparative simile pattern found across languages, so the overall meaning is directly derivable from the parts.
Etymology
The idiom green as grass comes from the image of new, bright green grass that has just grown. Because that grass is young and fresh, calling someone green as grass means they are 'inexperienced' or 'naive'.