Job's comforter
- noun
- /dʒoʊbz ˈkʌmfərtər/
:
consolador de Job
- Whenever I was feeling low, Mark acted like a Job's comforter instead of helping.
Examples
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Instead of cheering me up, her comments made her sound like a real Job's comforter.
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Everyone needs support, but nobody wants a Job's comforter in their time of need.
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Don't be such a Job's comforter!
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She always acts like a Job's comforter when I'm upset.
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Her words were meant to comfort me, but they only made her seem like a Job's comforter.
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Whenever I seek advice, I try to avoid those who act like a Job's comforter.
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His attempts to console her only revealed him as a Job's comforter, making her feel worse.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
Job's + comforter
This phrase relies on an allusion to the biblical figure Job and a historical ironic sense: Job's supposed 'comforters' made him feel worse rather than better. A B1 learner who knows 'comforter' and the surface form 'Job's' (which could be misread as the common noun 'job') will not be able to derive this culturally specific, ironic meaning from the constituents alone.
Etymology
Job's comforter comes from the Bible story of Job, whose friends came to 'comfort' him but instead blamed him and made him feel worse. So today a Job's comforter is someone who tries to help but actually 'makes things worse'.