to raining pitchforks
- idiom
- Informal
:
llueve a cántaros
- It's raining pitchforks up here.
Examples
-
During the storm, it started raining pitchforks, causing the streets to flood quickly.
-
The weather report warned everyone to stay indoors because it was raining pitchforks all evening.
-
When we stepped outside, we found that it was raining pitchforks, making it impossible to walk without getting soaked.
Synonyms
8
5.5
To fall very hard, usually about rain
3
5.9
To rain very hard
1
6.5
To rain very hard
1
8.4
To rain very heavily
1
3.5
To fall from above in large amounts, like rain or ash
1
5.6
To pour a lot of water from the sky
Rain that falls very hard
To rain very heavily
Falling in a heavy, steady flow like strong rain
Antonyms
How Heavy
Surface Forms
Morphology
rain + pitchforks
The phrase creates a vivid metaphor (rain like falling pitchforks) so a learner who knows 'rain' and 'pitchfork' can guess it means very heavy or violent rain, but the mapping from the literal objects to the intensity sense is figurative rather than compositional. Because the image is metaphorical and 'pitchfork' is a relatively rare/concrete cultural object, the sense is partially inferable but not fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
The idiom raining pitchforks may come from the image of very heavy rain falling in long, straight lines, like the prongs of a pitchfork. So, when people say it, they mean 'raining very heavily'.