to whistle in the dark
1
9.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
hablar en vano
- If anybody here REALLY believed this article (as opposed to just whistling in the dark as a partial self-delusion to temporarily soothe the anxiety of a feared but likely outcome), you should know that the betting markets before the election were all offering around 3:1 odds if you thought Romney would win.
- just whistling in the dark
Examples
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On top of that endemic scandal, asking us to participate in a more enlightened form of dialogue is whistling in the dark.
Blog text (23) -
He was just whistling in the dark.
Blog text (12) -
Bester is whistling in the dark, hoping that China will depart from a successful relationship.
Blog text (3) -
If we keep "whistling in the dark" instead of facing reality, the liberals are going to win more and more often—not all the time, but more of the time.
Blog text (3) -
They are just whistling in the dark if they think the problem will solve itself.
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Trying to convince him to change his mind now is merely whistling in the dark.
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The team's reassurances feel like whistling in the dark given the current crisis.
How Effective
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal image of someone 'whistling in the dark' (making a whistle while it is dark) gives a clue of self-reassurance or bravado, so a learner could partly infer that it involves a comforting or defiant action. However, the pragmatic sense that the action is ineffective or futile is an idiomatic extension that is not fully predictable from the parts and relies on cultural/pragmatic knowledge, so it would not be reliably understood by a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.
Etymology
The idiom whistle in the dark comes from the image of a person walking alone at night who starts to whistle in the dark to hide their fear and feel braver, even though the whistling does not change the danger. So today it means doing or saying something that only comforts you and is 'ineffective' or 'futile'.