wrong end of the telescope
- idiom
- Informal
:
ver la situación al revés
- If you judge his entire career by one mistake, you're seeing it through the wrong end of the telescope.
Examples
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You're looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope!
-
When you analyze only the problems without considering the progress, you're looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope.
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The company's strategy seemed like it was devised through the wrong end of the telescope, focusing on minor issues while ignoring the big picture.
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Don't view the issue through the wrong end of the telescope!
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He always sees the world through the wrong end of the telescope, focusing on the negative instead of the positive.
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When she described the project, it was clear she was looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope, misunderstanding its potential.
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In his criticism of the policy, he was seeing everything through the wrong end of the telescope, missing the benefits it could bring.
Synonyms
5
7.5
A wrong idea about what something means
1
7.5
A narrow way of thinking that ignores long-term effects
1
7.2
A state of having wrong ideas that lead people to make bad choices
1
9.3
A situation where a person's charm makes others ignore real problems
How Accurate
68
3.9
3
5.6
- Informal
- Informal
19
7.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
wrong + end + of + the + telescope
The phrase evokes the literal image of looking through the wrong end of a telescope, which naturally implies a distorted or misguided view; a B1 learner who knows 'wrong', 'end' and 'telescope' can infer this figurative sense. The spatial/compositional metaphor is straightforward and cross-linguistically accessible, so the meaning is directly derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Wrong end of the telescope comes from the simple picture of someone holding a small telescope the wrong end toward their eye so the view is tiny, backwards and confusing. So, the phrase means 'seeing a situation in a wrong or misleading way'.