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Glite Dictionary
to learn one's lesson

to learn one's lesson

34 3.4
A person notices they made a mistake and does things differently to avoid it again
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : aprender la lección
  • After failing the exam, he finally learned his lesson and started studying harder.

Examples

Synonyms

to learn the hard way
vsto learn one's lesson
  • Informal
22 6.0

Find out by going through a difficult or painful experience instead of being warned

is about changing behavior to avoid repeating the same mistake

Antonyms

to disregard
119 3.9

Ignore something or someone on purpose

How Deeply

to reform
57 4.4
to learn one's lesson
  • Informal
34 3.4
change
∞ 1.1
to regret
481 1.2
to notice
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

learn one's lesson infinitive
learned one's lesson past
learned one's lesson past participle
learning one's lesson present participle
learns one's lesson third person singular

Morphology

learn + one + lesson

The parts 'learn' + 'one's' + 'lesson' map directly onto the idea of acquiring a lesson or takeaway, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer a general sense of 'learning something'. However, the idiomatic nuance that this learning specifically follows a bad experience or mistake (and often implies behavioral change as a result) is not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is not fully transparent.

Etymology

Learn one's lesson comes from the school image: to learn a lesson is to study and understand something. So when someone has a bad experience and then changes their behaviour, we say they have 'learned their lesson', meaning 'they will not make the same mistake again'.