to write the book on
6
7.6
- idiom
:
ser la autoridad en
- And we've got with us Doctor Deandra Leslie Palecki, who wrote the book on the physics of NASCAR.
- literally wrote the book on
- wrote the book on the subject
Edward Bernays wrote the book on this called The Engineering of Consent.
- Edward Bernays wrote the book on this called The Engineering of Consent.
- And we've got with us Doctor Deandra Leslie Palecki, who wrote the book on the physics of NASCAR.
- And I just want you to know, Chuck, that Angela wrote the book on grit.
Examples
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Besides writing the book on podcasting, she's published short stories, written stories for 15 role-playing games, one textbook, and scores of podcasting scripts.
Blog text (33) -
You practically wrote the book on bank fraud.
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I heard you basically wrote the book on evolutionary biology.
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Andrew Stein's the guy who wrote the book on the subject.
Fiction book (1995) -
Edward Bernays wrote the book on this called The Engineering of Consent.
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This man's father wrote the book on submarine warfare.
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He literally wrote the book on how to be an ethical and professional telesales person in an industry that sorely needed it.
Blog text (33) -
Drummond looks bored and at times frustrated, but he wrote the book on how to conduct all-day depositions, and his meter is ticking too.
Fiction book (1995) -
Oh, listen, my father wrote the book on child development.
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I heard you basically wrote the book on evolutionary biology.
How Knowledgeable
6
7.6
∞
1.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal composition 'write' + 'book' + 'on' clearly yields 'author a book about (a topic)', so the base sense is transparent from the constituents. However, the MWE's conventionalized extension meaning 'to be a leading authority' is a pragmatic/metaphorical inference (authoring implies expertise) that is not fully predictable without cultural or usage knowledge, so a B1 learner may not reliably derive the idiomatic sense.
Etymology
The phrase write the book on comes from the simple image of someone who writes a whole book about a subject; if you 'wrote the book', others learn from you and you are the expert, so it means 'to be the leading authority'.