somewhere along the line
24
4.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
en algún momento
- Everything that has happened to you in life will have a good outcome somewhere along the line.
And somewhere along the line, I realized like, oh, it's just that in book form.
- And somewhere along the line, I realized like, oh, it's just that in book form.
- Now we know there was a there was a scrap yard involved somewhere along the line.
- With most things in life, somewhere along the line you stop enjoying things as much as you used to.
- We've been created in God's image. Somewhere along the line, way back when somebody got that mixed up.
- And then, you know, the Black Death, you know, has has has a hand in that somewhere along the line.
- That's a big pitfall for me because then somewhere along the line, I think you sometimes will lose the heart of what your project is.
- But as luck would have it, somewhere along the line, she was introduced to another lifestyle and that was to the form of Hinduism.
- But somewhere along the line, he had what some people get.
- And somewhere along the line, I sort of took my love of storytelling and reading and writing.
- So it's somewhere along the line, you come up with the with the information that black man walking around with a hoodie equals danger.
Examples
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Somewhere along the line, they lost the religious connections of the game.
Academic text (2003) -
With most things in life, somewhere along the line you stop enjoying things as much as you used to.
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But somewhere along the line, he had what some people get.
-
But we seem to take a step back somewhere along the line.
Blog text (22) -
Whatever the reason, somewhere along the line, their process was broken.
Blog text (8) -
Somewhere along the line, you had a crisis of faith.
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Somewhere along the line, you took a wrong turn.
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Somewhere along the line, I disappeared.
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We were moving around a lot-- well, you have to in that line of work-- and somewhere along the line, we picked up this dog, and one of the boys took to feeding it, so it followed us everywhere.
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But somewhere along the line, he had what some people get.
Synonyms
30
3.4
At some point while things are happening or changing
Surface Forms
Morphology
someplace + along + the + line
The phrase combines 'somewhere' (an unspecified place/point) with 'along' (during/throughout) and 'line' used in the common metaphorical sense of a sequence or process, so the meaning 'at some unspecified point during a process' is directly derivable from its parts. This metaphoric use of 'line' is widespread cross-linguistically and follows normal compositional patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents should be able to infer the meaning.
Etymology
Somewhere along the line comes from the picture of a long line or path that shows events in order. If you imagine a dot stopping at an unknown spot along that line, it explains why the phrase means 'at some point' during a process.