to drink from a firehose
- idiom
- Informal
:
recibir demasiada información
- With multiple deadlines approaching, it felt as if I was drinking from a firehose, trying to manage everything at once.
Examples
-
When I started my new job, the amount of training materials was like drinking from a firehose.
-
In the first week of this course, I felt like I was drinking from a firehose with all the information I had to absorb.
-
It's not the first course you're you will take here that has you drinking from a firehose, but this one's pretty valuable stuff.
Synonyms
135
3.5
Be unable to cope with a large amount of something, for example work
93
3.7
To put too much into something so it cannot work properly
88
3.9
Give someone too much work or problems so they cannot cope
27
3.5
To get more things than you can handle
13
5.7
To give someone many questions or requests at the same time
5
7.4
To give someone so much work or so many requests that they cannot cope
1
4.4
You have too much work and not enough time
1
7.9
Very busy with too many things to do
To give someone more work than they can do
Having too much paperwork to handle
Antonyms
How Overwhelmed
135
3.5
- Informal
- Informal
1
4.4
7
3.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal image of 'drink' + 'from a firehose' allows a learner to infer an overwhelming, unmanageable intake because a firehose implies an extremely high flow; thus the metaphorical meaning 'receive too much information/tasks at once' is accessible from the parts. However the sense depends on an extralinguistic, exaggerated image and a metaphoric mapping rather than straightforward composition, so it is not fully predictable from the words alone.
Etymology
Drink from a firehose comes from a simple picture: imagine trying to drink from a strong firehose that sends out a huge rush of water. Because you would get too much at once and could not handle it, the phrase now means 'to be overwhelmed by too much information or work'.