Idiom
make a meal of
Meaning
To spend more time and energy on some task than it warrants; to make something overly complicated; to make a big thing out of.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Don't make a meal of it — just finish the report.”
“He made a meal of washing the dishes, taking two hours when it needed twenty minutes.”
“The critic made a meal of the novel's minor flaws, devoting pages to symbolism that most readers would barely notice.”
Examples
simple
“Don't make a meal of it — just finish the report.”
contextual
“He made a meal of washing the dishes, taking two hours when it needed twenty minutes.”
complex
“The critic made a meal of the novel's minor flaws, devoting pages to symbolism that most readers would barely notice.”
Key words
Related idioms
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