to unring the bell
1
9.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
no se puede deshacer
- It's that you can't unring the bell.
Examples
-
Now it's impossible to unring the bell.
-
It's awfully hard to unring that bell.
Blog text (3) -
You can't unring the bell.
Blog text (12) -
After a few nights without much sleep, arranging and rearranging everything that I had been told by the Miami Medical Examiner, I decided that the only way I could move forward was to proceed as if what I had been told was not true; my mission was now to unring a bell that had been rung.
Blog text (26) -
You can't unring the bell once a decision has been made.
-
Saying 'sorry' won't help; you can't unring the bell of what was said.
-
When the news broke, everyone realized they couldn't unring the bell of the situation.
Synonyms
1
9.7
To try to undo something you cannot change
1
9.9
Try to make things the way they were after they changed
To try to undo harm caused by words or actions
To cancel or undo an event so it no longer takes place
Surface Forms
Morphology
The form is compositionally transparent at the word level: learners who know the prefix un- (reversal) and ring/bell can infer a literal sense of attempting to undo a bell being rung. However, the phrase is used metaphorically to mean undoing an action or its consequences (with the nuance that it cannot be reversed), which is an idiomatic extension not fully predictable from the parts, so a B1 learner may only partly infer the exact meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
The expression unring the bell paints a simple picture: once you ring a bell, its sound spreads and you cannot take it back. So, to unring the bell means trying to 'undo' something that has already happened and cannot be changed back.