price of tea in China
- idiom
- Informal
:
el precio del té en China
- What does the price of tea in China have to do with our discussion?
Examples
-
The price of tea in China is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
-
When deciding on a job offer, the price of tea in China doesn't really matter.
-
He kept bringing up politics, but that had nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
-
Your story is interesting, but what does it have to do with the price of tea in China?
-
He kept bringing up politics, but that had nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
-
Your story is interesting, but what does it have to do with the price of tea in China?
-
When deciding on a job offer, the price of tea in China doesn't really matter.
Synonyms
2
9.9
Something of little or no worth
1
8.3
A question that shows something is not related to the topic
Something that is not related to what people are talking about
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a conventionalized rhetorical question meaning 'irrelevant' and this sense does not follow directly from the literal meanings of 'price', 'tea', 'in' and 'China'. Even if a learner might infer distance or foreignness, the conventionalized dismissive use is unpredictable without prior exposure, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would likely not derive the idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
The expression price of tea in China comes from the picture of a fact far away: the actual price of tea in China would not matter to people here. So it is used to say that something is 'irrelevant' or not important to the topic.