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Idiom: Save your bacon
You can be the breadwinner for a family and put food on the table by bringing home the bacon, but did you know someone can save your bacon as well?
Food plays an integral part in English idioms.
Bacon plays a vital role in American food culture.
You can take any dish, add bacon and cheese, and it becomes the best-selling soul food in the entire United States of America.
The thing is, though, that being Canadian, I prefer Canadian bacon.
Americans like to call it back bacon.
Either way, Canadian bacon is leaner.
American side bacon has too much fat for me.
Anyway, my intention today is to introduce the idiom save your bacon, which has nothing to do with food.
When someone saves your bacon, they rescue you from danger or some adverse situation.
About two weeks ago, Japanese school kids returned to school after summer vacation.
I’m sure that many kids had to save their friend’s bacon by letting them copy homework assignments.
It’s not good to copy homework, but when you are in a difficult situation, you’ll do anything to save your bacon.
If the teacher finds out that a student didn’t do their summer homework, there will be a price to pay.
The above picture shows that the food-related idiom save your bacon is a good fit for the situation.
The poor lady in the rubber dingy has no idea she’s about to become lunch for some menacing-looking sharks.
Now, if she happened to have some bacon with her, she could throw it into the water to distract the sharks.
Then, while they were chasing the bacon, she could save her bacon by quickly rowing back to shore.
Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t seem to have any oars.
Would you put your hands in the water to row to shore?
She’ll have to wait for someone to come along and save her bacon.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
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 71.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.