caviar to the general
- idiom
- Informal
:
caviar para el común
- Much of avant-garde art can seem like caviar to the general and is often underappreciated.
Examples
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The professor's complex theories were really caviar to the general in that small rural town.
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Don't you think this movie is just caviar to the general?
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His poetry was caviar to the general, admired by few but misunderstood by many.
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This dish is caviar to the general for most diners.
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His poetry was caviar to the general, admired by few but misunderstood by many.
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Much of avant-garde art can seem like caviar to the general and is often underappreciated.
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The professor's complex theories were really caviar to the general in that small rural town.
Synonyms
High quality but not understood or liked by most people
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although 'caviar' denotes a luxury food, the full sense 'something refined that is not appreciated by most people' cannot be reliably derived from the literal parts because the phrase 'to the general' does not transparently signal 'not appreciated' or 'the uninitiated' to a learner. This is an idiomatic, culture-specific comparison where the intended contrast (refinement vs common taste) is not predictable from the constituents, so a B1 learner who knows the words would likely not infer the idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
The idiom caviar to the general may come from the image of caviar (expensive fish eggs) that many people, even a general, would not enjoy or understand. So caviar to the general means 'something very fine or refined that most people do not appreciate'.