Idiom
scratch the surface
Meaning
To barely begin; to see or do only a fraction of what is possible.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“This book only scratches the surface of the topic.”
“The documentary was interesting, but it barely scratched the surface of such a complex issue.”
“Though the lecture touched on decades of research, it could only scratch the surface of what scholars had uncovered about the lost civilization.”
Examples
simple
“This book only scratches the surface of the topic.”
contextual
“The documentary was interesting, but it barely scratched the surface of such a complex issue.”
complex
“Though the lecture touched on decades of research, it could only scratch the surface of what scholars had uncovered about the lost civilization.”
Key words
Related idioms
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