to know which side your bread is buttered on
1
9.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
saber dónde están tus intereses
- Trinie never pushes too hard; she knows which side her bread is buttered on.
Examples
-
It's time that business advertisers let the major media outlets—TV, radio, and print media—know which side their bread is buttered on.
Blog text (26) -
Well, as you can imagine, I was all "WHAT!?! My camel?!?" Smart man, only a few seconds, and he was "Yes, your highness, of course I would like to escort you and your friends out in our new camel cart." Got to love a man who knows which side his bread is buttered on. :)
Blog text (10) -
"You know better than anyone which side your bread's buttered on.
Fiction book (1990) -
He lobbied for the NRA, so we know which side his bread is buttered on.
-
Trinie never pushes too hard; she knows which side her bread is buttered on.
-
He lobbied for the NRA, so we know which side his bread is buttered on.
-
It's time that business advertisers let the major media outlets know which side their bread is buttered on.
Synonyms
4
8.2
To put your own needs before other people's
Antonyms
How Strategic
465
2.5
- Informal
1
9.1
- Informal
4
8.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
know + which + side + your + bread + be + buttered + on
The idiom's meaning ('be aware of where your advantage lies') cannot be reliably derived from the literal constituents: knowing 'bread', 'buttered' and 'side' as kitchen items does not lead to the figurative reading. The expression relies on a culturally specific metaphor (bread = money/earnings and the buttered side indicating advantage) that a B1 learner who only knows the literal word meanings is unlikely to infer, so it is unpredictable.
Etymology
Know which side your bread is buttered on may come from the simple picture of someone who sees which side of their bread is buttered and so stays near the person who gives them food or help. That's why it means 'to be aware of where your advantage lies and act to keep it'.