to show ankle
- idiom
- NSFW
:
mostrar el tobillo
- In Victorian times, to show ankle was considered scandalous for a woman.
Examples
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Her choice to show ankle while wearing a fashionable dress raised a few eyebrows at the conservative gathering.
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When she hiked up her dress as she ran, she inadvertently began to show ankle.
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He joked that the party was so formal, no one dared to show ankle.
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She dared to show ankle at the party.
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Don't show ankle in public!
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In the 19th century, women who dared to show ankle at a public event were often considered bold or daring.
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During the summer picnic, she felt free to show ankle without worrying about the strict dress codes of the past.
Synonyms
56
6.1
Remove clothing so parts of the body are shown, sometimes in a sexual or public way
11
3.4
Remove clothing to show part of the body
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The basic meaning 'to reveal one's ankle' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'show' + 'ankle', so a B1 learner who knows both words would grasp the core action. However, the expression often carries an additional cultural/pragmatic nuance of modesty or provocation and is somewhat idiomatic/archaic, which is not fully predictable from the constituents alone.
Etymology
Show ankle comes from old times when women's long skirts covered their legs and to show an ankle was seen as shocking. Because that small reveal broke the social rules, the phrase came to mean 'to reveal something in a way people find bold or shocking'.