like water off a duck's back
- idiom
:
como agua sobre las espaldas de un pato
- Even though he was insulted, the criticism rolled off him like water off a duck's back.
Examples
-
It's like water off a duck's back.
Blog text (1) -
But I think that went like water off a duck's back.
Blog text (13) -
The harsh comments were like water off a duck's back to her; she simply ignored them.
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For her, the negativity from others was just like water off a duck's back; it never bothered her.
Synonyms
Not upset or harmed when something happens to someone else
Antonyms
How Affected
Surface Forms
Morphology
like + water + off + a + duck's + back
The phrase evokes a clear physical image—water sliding off a duck's back—so a learner can partly infer that criticisms 'slide off' and do not stick; this makes the metaphorical relation somewhat predictable from the parts. However, understanding depends on knowing that ducks' feathers repel water (a culturally specific image) and mapping that image to the abstract idea of being unaffected, so it is not fully transparent to an average B1 learner who only knows the literal word meanings.
Etymology
Like water off a duck's back comes from the image of water sliding off a duck's oily feathers, where drops run off the duck's back and do not stick. So, when something is like water off a duck's back, it 'has no effect' on the person.