pebble in someone's shoe
- idiom
- Informal
:
piedra en el zapato
- The little delays in the project became a pebble in someone's shoe for the entire team.
Examples
-
Dealing with constant emails from the group was like having a pebble in someone's shoe during the workday.
-
His frequent complaints about the weather felt like a pebble in someone's shoe that never went away.
-
With the house lights about to come on, I'd find a desperate, ugly chick to lick my wounds and split, but you have been a pebble in my shoe since the very beginning.
Synonyms
21
3.2
A person or thing that bothers you
2
4.9
A small thing that bothers you a little
1
7.0
Something that keeps causing you trouble or worry
A small problem that keeps annoying someone
Antonyms
How Annoying
- NSFW
70
5.6
14
4.8
27
3.6
- Informal
29
2.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
pebble + in + someone's + shoe
The sense 'a minor but persistent annoyance' is directly inferable from the literal image of a pebble inside a shoe causing ongoing discomfort; the constituent meanings combine in a straightforward, concrete way. This physical-to-figurative mapping is a common, cross-linguistic metaphor and should be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the words.
Etymology
Pebble in someone's shoe comes from the simple image of a small pebble stuck in a shoe that keeps rubbing and hurting every time you walk. So it now means a small but constant 'annoyance' or 'irritation' that you cannot easily ignore.