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Sobre llovido, mojado
I was watching a call-in show in The Line, one of my favourite channels, and the hosts were lamenting Trump's win. Not to become too political, they were reviewing their strategies supporting Harris and half joking about "the resistance starts today" and I thought "sobre llovido, mojado" that we use when you try to fix a problem, you may have contributed to or not, by talking actions that may make it worst.
I want to learn similar expressions in English and Spanish. It's not "adding fuel to the fire" because with "sobre llovido, mojado" either you are somewhat to blame for the original "fire" or neither the original fire nor adding fuel to it have depended on you at all. Adding fuel to the fire/echar leña al fuego imply that inadvertently, maliciously or anything in between, you have done that but aren't liable for the original fire. |
I know this as «llover sobre mojado». In English, we say, "It's one thing after another" (with allowance for inserting "mess," "disaster," "catastrophe," etc., instead of "thing").
This can also be said, "It never rains, but it pours," or "When it rains, it pours." It's the same as "Nothing ever changes." And I also think "Adding insult to injury" works, too. It's not out of the question to say "Adding fuel to the fire," because you may be or aren't necessarily the one who started the fire. ("Pouring gasoline on the fire" is another option.) In Spanish, I've also heard «Por si éramos pocos, parió la abuela» or just «Éramos pocos y parió la abuela». |
Putting a bandaid on a problem or (depending on where you live in the USA) putting a bandaid on a bullet wound may translate the phrase. Anyway, the cake's all dough. Shikata ga nai.
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Thank you very much, Rusty and poli!!!
That's certainly a trove of expressions covering many aspects related to the phrase I asked about. I'll certainly come back to these posts to analise one expression at a time and look for examples in COCA or other languages corpuses. I'm still expecting to find exact matches to everything. One day I'll accept languages don't work that way. |
You often help us struggling Anglos, so it's my pleasure to help you with questions about English if I can.
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Thanks.
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