pissing in the wind
1
9.9
- idiom
- Offensive
:
perder el tiempo
Examples
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Just pissing in the wind.
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We're all just pissing in the wind until critics and industry groups stop predicting and start putting pen to paper for their best films and performances of the year.
Blog text (5) -
Where we are now is we are pissing in the wind, waging an incredibly expensive losing drug war that has all manner of unintended and devastating consequences.
Blog text (24) -
A couple of lonely anthropologists and a few other concerned citizens made futile efforts for curriculum sanity, but they might as well have been pissing in the wind, for all the good it did.
Blog text (6) -
Despite their hard work, the team's efforts to change the policy felt like pissing in the wind, as the administration showed no signs of listening.
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Trying to convince him to invest in that failing startup was like pissing in the wind, since he had already made up his mind.
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The activists realized they were pissing in the wind when their proposals were ignored by the city council.
Synonyms
728
1.6
To spend time doing things that are not useful instead of doing something more useful
8
9.5
To waste time or money by being careless
4
6.0
Waste time or money on small unimportant things
3
5.5
Fail to make progress even when you try hard
2
7.9
To waste time and effort without making progress
1
7.5
To waste effort on something that cannot succeed
1
9.9
To waste time by behaving in a silly or unproductive way instead of working
1
9.9
To waste time doing unimportant or silly things instead of doing something important
To waste time on busy work and make no progress
Spend time or money on unimportant things
To waste time, money, or chances on things that do not matter
How Pointless
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal image of urinating into the wind makes the futility of the action inferable — the wind would blow the urine back, so the effort is pointless. However the expression is metaphorical and register-marked (vulgar), requiring pragmatic inference and cultural familiarity rather than straightforward compositional meaning, so it is not fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
The idiom pissing in the wind comes from the image of someone trying to piss against a strong wind, so the stream blows back and the action is useless or makes things worse. That's why the phrase means 'wasting time or effort on something that is pointless'.