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Glite Dictionary
to pose a riddle

to pose a riddle

5.8
Give a puzzling question for other people to solve
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : plantear un acertijo
  • In the second structure, an erudite princess (like Turandot) will marry a man who can pose a riddle to her that she cannot solve (H551.2 Woman gives self to solver of riddles).

Examples

  • During the game night, she decided to pose a riddle to her friends that challenged their logic.

  • To make the meeting more interesting, he posed a riddle that got everyone brainstorming creative solutions.

  • The teacher chose to pose a riddle at the beginning of class to engage the students' critical thinking.

Synonyms

to riddle
vsto pose a riddle
6 6.0

To ask difficult questions to puzzle other people

focuses on presenting a puzzling question for others to solve

Antonyms

to answer
544 1.0

To find or give a solution to a problem

How Challenging

to stump
39 5.3
to baffle
65 5.3
to pose a riddle
5.8
to ask
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

pose a riddle infinitive
posed a riddle past
posed a riddle past participle
posing a riddle present participle
poses a riddle third person singular

Morphology

pose + a + riddle

The meaning 'to present a puzzling question' is directly and compositionally built from 'pose' (to put forward) plus 'riddle' (a puzzling question); the article 'a' is semantically light. This is a regular verb + object construction found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

Pose a riddle uses the verb pose in the old sense 'to put' a question in front of people, like placing a small puzzle on a table for others to look at and think about. So pose a riddle means 'to present a puzzling question or problem'.