teach grandma how to suck eggs
- idiom
- Archaic
:
dar lecciones a quien ya sabe
- He felt that explaining basic math to the professor was like trying to teach grandma how to suck eggs.
Examples
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There's no need to teach grandma how to suck eggs; she's been cooking for decades.
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By telling the master carpenter how to use his tools, you're just teaching grandma how to suck eggs.
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Don't teach grandma how to suck eggs!
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It's pointless to teach grandma how to suck eggs.
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Explaining the finer points of chess to a grandmaster is just teaching grandma how to suck eggs.
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Trying to offer investment advice to a seasoned banker is like teaching grandma how to suck eggs.
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When a novice chef suggests new recipes to a Michelin-starred cook, that's teaching grandma how to suck eggs.
How Condescending
- Archaic
- Offensive
15
6.6
- Offensive
52
7.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
teach + grandma + how + to + suck + egg
The meaning ('to give advice to someone already more experienced') is not transparently built from the literal parts: taken literally the phrase describes an odd physical action and does not encode the interpersonal judgement about unnecessary advice. This is a culture-specific idiom with historical roots, so a typical B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer the figurative sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
The saying teach grandma how to suck eggs comes from a simple image: trying to show an older, experienced woman how to suck eggs, a small kitchen trick she already knows. So the phrase now means 'to give advice to someone who already knows more than you'.