no prize for guessing
- idiom
- Informal
:
no hay premio por adivinar
- With her skills, there's no prize for guessing who will get the promotion.
Examples
-
The store was empty—no prize for guessing why, after all those bad reviews.
-
If you look at the scores, there's no prize for guessing the outcome.
-
He looks exhausted; no prize for guessing that he's been working late.
-
There's no prize for guessing who won!
-
He looks exhausted; no prize for guessing that he's been working late.
-
The store was empty—no prize for guessing why, after all those bad reviews.
-
With her skills, there's no prize for guessing who will get the promotion.
Synonyms
People say it in a rude way to show that what someone said is obvious
Antonyms
How Obvious
25
4.8
- Informal
∞
1.0
∞
1.0
65
3.2
207
3.9
230
4.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
The intended meaning — that something is obvious or easily predicted — follows directly from the literal composition 'there is no prize for guessing': if guessing yields no reward, there is no need to guess because the answer is obvious. This pragmatic inference is straightforward and common in similar phrases (e.g. 'no points for guessing'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to understand it.
Etymology
No prize for guessing comes from the image of a contest: if an answer is so easy that anyone can see it, there is no prize for guessing it. So people use the phrase to say something is 'obvious' or easy to predict.