flea bag
1
7.2
- noun
- /fliː bæɡ/
- Slang
:
sofá viejo
- The apartment was filled with vintage furniture, but the sofa was a flea bag that needed replacing.
Examples
-
It is just another flea bag.
Blog text (19) -
After years of wear and tear, the old sofa became a real flea bag that nobody wanted to sit on.
-
He regretted buying that second-hand couch; it turned out to be a dirty flea bag.
How Shabby
- Slang
1
7.2
257
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
flea + bag
The element 'flea' evokes dirt/infestation and 'bag' denotes a worthless or shabby object, so a learner could infer a meaning related to something dirty or rundown. However, the specific conventional sense (a shabby sofa/lodging or pejorative compound) and its usual referent are idiomatic and not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Flea bag may come from the image of a flea-filled bag or bed, a strong picture of something dirty and falling apart. That's why flea bag is used to mean 'an old, shabby, or dirty sofa'.