like caviar to the general
- idiom
- The artist's avant-garde work was like caviar to the general and failed to attract a wide audience.
Examples
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His philosophical insights were like caviar to the general, too sophisticated for most listeners.
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Her thoughtful presentation was like caviar to the general, going largely unnoticed by her colleagues.
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This art piece is like caviar to the general for most people.
-
To her friends, his poetry is like caviar to the general.
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Her thoughtful presentation was like caviar to the general, going largely unnoticed by her colleagues.
-
His philosophical insights were like caviar to the general, too sophisticated for most listeners.
-
The artist's avant-garde work was like caviar to the general and failed to attract a wide audience.
Synonyms
7
9.9
Ideas that only a small group of experts understand
1
9.9
Something very good that most people do not appreciate or understand
Antonyms
How Appreciated
6
2.8
42
3.4
15
4.7
520
2.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
like + caviar + to + the + general
The constituent words give partial clues: 'caviar' denotes something luxurious and 'like' signals a comparison, so a learner could infer a contrast between a refined item and the 'general' as an unlikely appreciator. However, understanding the idiomatic nuance relies on a cultural/pragmatic inference (the stereotype that a general would not appreciate caviar) that a B1 learner may not make reliably, so the phrase is only partially predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Like caviar to the general gives a clear picture: caviar is a very fancy food and a practical general may not enjoy or notice it. So one popular story says the phrase is used for something 'valuable but not appreciated by most people'.