to could eat a horse
- idiom
- Informal
:
me podría comer un caballo
- After the long hike, he said he could eat a horse because he was so hungry.
Examples
-
I could eat a horse.
-
I could eat a horse.
-
You could eat a horse, couldn't you?
-
He could eat a horse...
Fiction book (1994) -
After skipping breakfast, I could eat a horse by lunchtime.
-
With how active she has been all morning, she joked that she could eat a horse for lunch.
Synonyms
7
7.5
Eat a very large amount of food without control
5
7.8
To eat in a very messy and greedy way
3
4.9
To eat a very large amount of food
How Hungry
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal meanings of 'could' + 'eat' + 'horse' point to the (implausible) ability to consume a whole horse, so a learner can detect exaggeration from the constituents, but the conventionalized hyperbolic meaning 'very hungry' is not a direct compositional inference. Many languages use similar hyperboles, so the link is partially predictable but requires recognition of figurative exaggeration rather than a straightforward compositional reading.
Etymology
The idiom could eat a horse is a funny exaggeration that creates a clear image of someone so hungry they could eat a whole horse. So it is used to say 'extremely hungry'.