🗓️ Idiom: To Needle Someone (verb)
💬 Meaning
- To deliberately annoy or tease someone, often in a playful way.
- To make small, repeated comments that irritate someone.
🧠 Example Sentences
- Jake likes to needle his coworkers about being late for meetings.
- She was needling her friend all morning about his new hairstyle.
- Don’t needle him about the report, he’s already stressed enough.
🏛️ Origin
The idiom comes from the action of a needle poking something — small, sharp, and irritating. It began being used in English in the early 1900s to describe teasing or provoking someone with words.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
Mark kept ________ his teammate about the mistake in the report.
Answer
needling
2. Choose the correct answer:
If you “needle someone,” you:
a) Encourage them kindly
b) Tease or annoy them repeatedly
c) Help them stay calm
Answer
b) Tease or annoy them repeatedly
3. Change the sentence using “needle someone”:
“He kept teasing her about being too serious at work.”
Answer
He kept needling her about being too serious at work.
ℹ️ Other Useful Pages
📚 Learning Resources
👉 Idioms for Humour in the Workplace
👉 Business English Idioms List
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Rob is a CELTA qualified English teacher with 15 years of international experience. He has a BSc and PGDip from Loughborough and St Andrews universities in the UK. He has taught in Thailand and Saudi Arabia and now works with professionals worldwide.
