🗓️ Idiom: A Lemon (n)
💬 Meaning
- A product, especially a vehicle or electronic item, that does not work well or has many problems
- Something defective or disappointing after purchase
🧠 Example Sentences
- The new tablet looked great in the ad, but it turned out to be a lemon.
- They offered a refund because the customer claimed the laptop was a lemon.
- Selling a lemon to a customer can hurt the company’s reputation.
🏛️ Origin
This idiom comes from American slang in the early 1900s. A “lemon” was used to describe something that looked good but failed to meet expectations. It became especially common in the car industry to describe faulty vehicles.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
The car broke down after one week. I think we bought ____________________.
Answer
a lemon
2. Choose the correct meaning of “a lemon”:
A) A delicious product
B) A faulty or disappointing product
C) A high-performing item
Answer
B) A faulty or disappointing product
3. Change the sentence using “a lemon”:
“The phone has had nothing but problems since we bought it.”
Answer
The phone is a lemon.
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