is the sky blue?
- idiom
- Informal
:
¿es el cielo azul?
- When asked if she loves chocolate, she replied, 'Is the sky blue?'
Examples
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You really think it could be anything else? Is the sky blue?
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Do you think he'll be late again? Is the sky blue?
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'Will the team try their best?' 'Is the sky blue?'
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Of course, is the sky blue?
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'Will the team try their best?' 'Is the sky blue?'
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Do you think he'll be late again? Is the sky blue?
-
When asked if she loves chocolate, she replied, 'Is the sky blue?'
Synonyms
A question people ask to show the answer is clearly yes
A sarcastic question people ask to say the answer is obviously yes
A funny informal way to say yes very clearly and strongly
To say yes strongly in an informal, rude way
Surface Forms
Morphology
The words compose a literal question ('is the sky blue?') so the surface meaning is fully predictable from the constituents, but the conventionalized use as a rhetorical device meaning 'obviously/yes' depends on pragmatic inference and discourse knowledge rather than pure lexical composition. Because this pragmatic shift is common across languages and can often be inferred from context, it is partly transparent but not fully derivable by a B1 learner without exposure.
Etymology
Is the sky blue? comes from a simple image: the daytime sky is usually blue, so asking this is like asking something everyone already knows. That's why people use it to mean 'yes' or 'of course'.
