through the looking-glass
1
9.1
- idiom
- Literature
:
a través del espejo
- In that courtroom, logic was inverted, as if we’d slipped through the looking-glass.
Examples
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It was like living through the looking-glass!
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When he entered the dream, it was like going through the looking-glass, where the ordinary rules of logic no longer applied.
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After the merger, the office atmosphere felt like we had gone through the looking-glass overnight.
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Her theories take readers through the looking-glass into a world of possibility.
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I felt through the looking-glass.
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After reading the strange news article, I felt as though I had stepped through the looking-glass into a bizarre world where nothing made sense.
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The movie takes you through the looking-glass, presenting a reality filled with twists and unconventional characters.
Synonyms
81
7.0
Strange like a dream and not real
1
9.9
Something that looks strange and like a vivid dream
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
through + the + looking-glass
The phrase literally describes going 'through' a 'looking-glass' (i.e. a mirror), so its figurative meaning of entering a strange or alternate reality is directly inferable from the constituent meanings. The mirror-as-portal metaphor is cross-linguistically familiar and follows straightforward compositional logic, so a B1 learner who knows the parts would readily grasp the intended sense.
Etymology
Through the looking-glass comes from Lewis Carroll's story where Alice steps through a mirror, a 'looking-glass', into a strange, reversed world. That's why it now means going into a 'strange' or 'alternate' reality where the usual rules are turned upside down and surprising things happen.