one hand tied behind one's back
- idiom
- Informal
:
con una mano atada a la espalda
- And I can't defend you, man, with one hand tied behind my back... because you keep from me what they can discover.
Examples
-
Even with one hand tied behind his back, she managed to win the race effortlessly.
-
She completed the project on time with one hand tied behind her back, despite all the challenges.
-
He won the game with one hand tied behind his back, showing just how skilled he really is.
Synonyms
Very easy to do without thinking
How Easy
30
3.1
∞
1.0
- Informal
1
7.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
one + hand + tied + behind + one + back
The expression literally evokes having a hand tied behind one’s back (the constituents directly build the image of being handicapped), so a learner can infer that accomplishing the task despite that handicap implies the task is very easy. However, the evaluative meaning (‘able to do something easily despite a disadvantage’) depends on pragmatic inference and conventionalized use rather than straightforward compositional semantics, so it is not fully predictable from the parts alone.
Etymology
One hand tied behind one's back paints the clear picture of a person with one hand literally tied behind their back who can still do a task easily. So it means someone is 'able to do something easily' even with a big disadvantage.