monkey wrench
1
7.0
- noun
- /ˈmʌŋki rɛntʃ/
- Informal
:
obstáculo inesperado
- They faced a monkey wrench when their main supplier went out of business.
- throw a monkey wrench
Then you throw the Cambridge Analytica monkey wrench.
- Then you throw the Cambridge Analytica monkey wrench.
Examples
-
OK, so that throws a bit of a monkey wrench into my plan.
-
Now that seems to throw a big monkey wrench into any notion of law.
-
Her sudden illness threw a big monkey wrench into our travel plans.
-
The unexpected rainstorm put a monkey wrench in our outdoor event.
Synonyms
35
4.8
An unexpected problem that is not obvious at first
25
4.6
An unexpected problem that delays a plan
22
7.7
An unexpected problem that makes a plan or situation more difficult
A sudden problem that stops plans from happening
A sudden problem that stops progress and causes delay
Antonyms
How Disruptive
Surface Forms
Morphology
monkey + wrench
The idiomatic meaning 'an unexpected problem' is metaphorically derived from the idea of a wrench (a tool) being thrown into machinery to disrupt it; this gives some clue to disruption but requires inferencing beyond the literal constituents. Because the role of 'monkey' is not transparently related to the obstacle meaning and the phrase relies on a cultural metaphor (compare British 'throw a spanner in the works'), a B1 learner who only knows the individual words may not reliably predict the idiomatic sense.
Etymology
Monkey wrench as an idiom comes from the image of throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of a machine to stop them. So it means 'an unexpected problem' that gets in the way of a plan.