Throwing Someone Under the Bus
This phrase is getting used more and more lately between native speakers. I hear it a lot at work and when speaking about work.
If you “Throw someone under the bus” it means that you tell other people about the bad things that person did. You tattle tail on them. It’s not very nice to do, but it’s a reality in the business world. It’s publicly blaming other people.
Here is an example sentence of how to use this like a native speaker: “I absolutely hate that new guy at work. He always tries to look good in front of the boss by throwing his colleagues under the bus. He does it even for small meaningless little things. He’s such a loser”
So imagine that you and another colleague went to do some presentation together. Then imagine you were 5 minutes late for the meeting. If your colleague decides to tell your boss about that, he’s “throwing you under the bus”. The only reason he’s telling the boss is to make you look bad. It’s a horrible thing to do.
You can also “throw yourself under the bus”. That basically means to take on some risk that isn’t necessary for something. Here’s an example: “I really trust you so I’m going to throw myself under the bus and not force you to sign this document. My boss would kill me if he knew I was doing this, but I don’t think it’s a big deal and I’m sure you won’t trick me”.
It’s a useful phrase and I hope you try it out! Native speakers will be impressed.
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July 16th, 2012 at 10:43 am
Hi guys, this is very similar and has some meanings as we say here. Throw him to the wolves, or throw him into the fire. I will jump into the fire for you.
July 16th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
This one is really awesome, I totally love it, I used to bought your podcast before and I really like it, very useful, I still keep learning it everyday from then on, and I like these posts as well, I expect you will keep updating things by posting things like this.