mouth of a sailor
- idiom
- NSFW
:
lenguaje soez
- Despite his professional appearance, he has the mouth of a sailor and curses constantly.
Examples
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Her friends joke that she’s got the mouth of a sailor whenever she watches sports.
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My grandmother sometimes has a mouth of a sailor when she gets frustrated with technology.
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What a mouth of a sailor he has!
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Her mouth of a sailor shocked everyone at the party.
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Despite his professional appearance, he has the mouth of a sailor and curses constantly.
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Her friends joke that she’s got the mouth of a sailor whenever she watches sports.
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My grandmother can have the mouth of a sailor when she gets frustrated with technology.
Synonyms
21
6.7
A person who talks too much, often loudly, and reveals private things
7
9.1
A person who often says swear words
1
6.7
A person who often uses bad words
Antonyms
How Vulgar
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'mouth' (speech or way of speaking) and 'sailor' (a person stereotypically using coarse language), so it describes someone who uses coarse or vulgar language. This is a straightforward compositional possessive/of-construction found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can reasonably infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Mouth of a sailor comes from the image of an old sailor who used a rough mouth full of bad words when he talked. That's why the phrase now means 'to swear a lot'.