reverse Midas touch
- noun
- Informal
:
toque Midas inverso
- After the disastrous event, everyone agreed that she had a reverse Midas touch with organizing parties.
Examples
-
John seems to have a reverse Midas touch; every project he leads ends up failing.
-
Valjar has the reverse Midas touch; so far, everything she touches turns to sh*t.
Blog text (17) -
It appears that Mark's reverse Midas touch affects his investments, as he has lost money on every stock he has chosen.
Antonyms
How Harmful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase builds transparently from 'reverse' (opposite) and 'touch' (skill/influence), but it relies on the idiomatic cultural reference 'Midas' (the king who turned things to gold). A B1 learner who knows the myth or the established idiom 'Midas touch' will infer the opposite meaning, but without that background the full sense (bringing ruin rather than success) is not predictable, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The noun reverse Midas touch plays on the old story of King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold with the original Midas touch. Adding 'reverse' imagines the opposite: everything someone touches goes wrong, so the phrase means 'a tendency to cause failure or ruin'.