in a pig's eye
1
9.9
- idiom
- Archaic
- Absolutely not! In a pig's eye!
Examples
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No way! In a pig's eye!
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She said she'd be home by midnight, but in a pig's eye she was!
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In a pig's eye will I lend you my car after last time.
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You think he'll actually admit he was wrong? In a pig's eye.
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You're going to win this game, in a pig's eye!
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He thinks I'll agree to that, in a pig's eye!
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If she thinks I'll help her, in a pig's eye!
Synonyms
26
9.8
Said to show that you do not believe or accept something
A strong way to refuse a suggestion or request
You say this when you are very surprised and do not believe something
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
in + a + pig's + eye
The idiomatic sense 'absolutely not' cannot be inferred from the literal parts 'in', 'a', 'pig's', and 'eye'—the words suggest a physical location but give no clue to disbelief or refusal. This is a culture-specific, non-compositional expression, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words but has not encountered the idiom would not predict its meaning.
Etymology
The idiom in a pig's eye comes from a joking picture of a pig's small, dull eye as a place where nothing would happen. One popular story says people used the pig's eye to mean 'never', so today in a pig's eye is used to say 'absolutely not' or 'no way'.