walking skin cancer
- noun
- Offensive
:
[término ofensivo para persona con alto riesgo de cáncer de piel]
- She spends so much time at the beach that her friends call her a walking skin cancer.
Examples
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Doctors warn that too much sun exposure can turn anyone into a walking skin cancer over time.
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After years of tanning beds, Mark jokes he's become a walking skin cancer.
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Don't be a walking skin cancer and forget your sunscreen!
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After all those tanning sessions, she became a real walking skin cancer.
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Mark jokes that after years of tanning beds, he has become a walking skin cancer.
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Doctors warn that excessive sun exposure can make someone a walking skin cancer.
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She spends so much time at the beach that her friends affectionately refer to her as a walking skin cancer.
How Vulnerable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines transparent elements ('skin' + 'cancer' clearly points to a skin disease) with a productive metaphorical pattern 'a walking X' meaning 'a living example of X', so a learner who knows the words can often infer a humorous label for someone at high risk. However, the meaning is figurative rather than literal and depends on understanding the 'walking X' construction, which may not be fully predictable for an average B1 learner without exposure.
Etymology
Walking skin cancer may come from a shocking but clear image: someone who spends so much time in the sun or in tanning beds that they seem like a moving example of skin cancer. So people use it jokingly to say someone is 'at high risk of developing skin cancer'.