A lemon

Go suck a lemon is a family-friendly way to tell someone to go away if you are mad at them. It originates from sailors eating lemons at sea.

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English Idiom: A lemon

So when is a lemon not what you think it is?

When it’s a smartphone, it could be a car, a TV, a microwave oven or any machine or device that does not work well.

Come on, it makes perfect sense.

You see, in English, any machine or device that does not function properly or that has a lot of problems is called a lemon.

Remember that phone created by a particular Korean company that kept exploding in people’s pockets and on airplanes?

That phone was a lemon, regardless of colour or taste.

So, there you have it. Anytime you have a machine or device that does not work properly, you can call it a lemon.


This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 76.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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