sack race
4
2.5
- noun
- /sæk reɪs/
:
carrera de sacos
- They were doing sack races, they had beanbags to play, beanbag toss, and even what looked like little hula hoops.
- a potato sack race
Examples
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The children giggled as they lined up for the sack race at the school sports day.
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Oh, I won that one in a three-legged sack race - last armed forces day picnic.
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Yeah, 'cause Mom fell in the sack race.
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Last event-- the sack race, y'all!
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Right here, we got an old-fashioned sack race.
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Sack races at the company picnic.
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A student leader directed a sack race activity during which Yarborough was injured.
Academic text (1995) -
It was a fucking potato-sack race!
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Much like a badge of pride you pin to your chest after your win in the potato sack race, only in this case, you have it pinned to your username!
Blog text (7) -
They were doing sack races, they had bean bags, they played bean bag toss, and even what looked like little hula hoops.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A contest to see who is fastest or finishes first
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a race in which competitors hop forward with their legs inside a sack' is directly and transparently derivable from combining 'sack' (a big bag) with 'race' (a contest to finish first). This straightforward noun–noun composition describes the type of contest and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Sack race comes from a simple children's game where each runner puts both legs inside a sack and hops toward the 'finish line'. Because people are hopping and often stumbling while racing in a sack, that clear picture explains why the phrase means this particular hopping 'race' today.