Idiom
beat around the bush
Meaning
To treat a topic, but omit its main points, often intentionally.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Stop beating around the bush and tell me what happened.”
“Instead of beating around the bush, the manager finally admitted that the project was over budget.”
“He spent ten minutes beating around the bush before he found the courage to tell his parents he had left university.”
Examples
simple
“Stop beating around the bush and tell me what happened.”
contextual
“Instead of beating around the bush, the manager finally admitted that the project was over budget.”
complex
“He spent ten minutes beating around the bush before he found the courage to tell his parents he had left university.”
Origin
From medieval bird hunting: beaters struck around bushes to flush out birds without attacking them directly; 'beat the bush' is attested from the 15th century.
Key words
Related idioms
- Level
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Updated