how goes the battle
- idiom
- Archaic
:
¿cómo va la batalla?
- So, how goes the battle with your new project?
Examples
-
Hey, how goes the battle at work these days?
-
Whenever I see my friend struggling with homework, I ask, 'How goes the battle?'
-
Every morning, he greets his colleagues by saying, 'How goes the battle?'
-
Sending a quick text, she wrote, 'How goes the battle with your moving plans?'
-
Every morning, he greets his colleagues by saying, 'How goes the battle?'
-
Sending a quick text, she wrote, 'How goes the battle with your moving plans?'
-
So, how goes the battle with your new project?
Synonyms
38
9.1
A casual greeting asking how someone is or what's new
19
9.6
To ask how things are going, for example about work or a project
3
9.9
A casual way to ask someone how they are or what they are doing
2
8.5
To ask someone how they are when you meet them
To ask how a situation is going, often as a joke about time passing
To ask someone in a friendly, casual way how they are
A friendly informal greeting that asks how someone is doing
A casual greeting that asks what is going on
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components are largely compositional: 'how' asks about manner, 'goes' denotes progress, and 'battle' can mean a struggle, so a learner who knows the words can infer 'how the struggle is progressing.' However, the phrase relies on a metaphorical use of 'battle' for work or a project and an inverted, somewhat idiomatic word order ('how goes the ...'), which may not be fully predictable for an average B1 learner without exposure.
Etymology
How goes the battle may come from the picture of a soldier asking 'how is the fight going', with battle giving a clear image of a struggle. Today people use it in a friendly way to ask how someone's hard task or problem is going, so it means 'how is it going' with their work or struggle.