to take the rough with the smooth
- idiom
- Informal
:
aceptar lo bueno y lo malo
- "We have to take the rough with the smooth and taste the bad stuff as well as the good stuff."
Examples
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In which case, they must take the rough with the smooth and fess up to their mistakes, as well as accept the Nobel Prize when it suits them.
Blog text (1) -
You have to take the rough with the smooth.
Blog text (15) -
We have to take the rough with the smooth and taste the bad stuff as well as the good stuff.
Blog text (1) -
In life, you need to take the rough with the smooth if you want to find happiness.
-
It's important to take the rough with the smooth when managing a business because not every day will be good.
-
To succeed in this job, you must take the rough with the smooth and learn from both failures and successes.
Synonyms
563
3.9
To accept something unpleasant that you cannot change
76
4.1
To accept a difficult or unpleasant situation
27
5.8
To accept something unpleasant that you cannot change
7
8.2
Accept failure or criticism bravely without complaining
6
5.0
Accept what happens calmly and do not worry
5
6.8
To accept an unpleasant situation without complaining
2
8.1
To accept unpleasant results and sometimes punishment for something you did
1
8.6
Tell someone to accept a situation they cannot change
Accept something as it is even if you do not like it
Antonyms
How Accepting
390
3.9
- Informal
∞
3.5
290
3.5
∞
1.0
311
2.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
take + the + rough + with + the + smooth
The meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'take' (accept), 'rough' (difficult/unpleasant) and 'smooth' (pleasant/easy) joined by 'with' (together), so a learner who knows these words can infer 'accept the unpleasant along with the pleasant'. This compositional pattern (accepting bad and good together) is common cross-linguistically, making the expression immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Take the rough with the smooth may come from the picture of a road with rough parts and smooth parts that a traveler must accept to keep going. So, it means 'to accept both the bad and good parts of a situation'.