{"id":73290,"date":"2020-03-23T08:15:38","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T08:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=73290"},"modified":"2020-03-23T08:15:38","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T08:15:38","slug":"take-potshots-at-english-idioms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/take-potshots-at-english-idioms\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Potshots At | English Idioms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To\u00a0<b>take potshots at somebody<\/b>\u00a0is to criticize them. This isn\u2019t fair criticism, though.\u00a0<b>Pot shot\u00a0<\/b>means criticism that is rather unfair. The sole objective of taking pot shots at somebody is to make them feel bad.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My mother-in-law likes\u00a0<b>to take potshots<\/b>\u00a0at everything that I do. (= My mother-in-law likes to criticize everything that I do.)<\/li>\n<li>He doesn\u2019t contribute anything meaningful, but he is very good at\u00a0<b>taking potshots at us<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Some people are quite fond of<b>\u00a0taking pot shots\u00a0<\/b>at their subordinates.<\/li>\n<li>During his speech, the opposition leader\u00a0<b>took potshots<\/b>\u00a0at the government.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The original meaning of this expression was somewhat different. In British English, the expression\u00a0<b>take pot shots<\/b>\u00a0was used to mean\u00a0<b>shoot without taking careful aim<\/b>. Needless to say, a person who takes pot shots is not a skilled shooter. Nowadays, this expression is mainly used to mean\u00a0<b>criticize<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To\u00a0take potshots at somebody\u00a0is to criticize them. This isn\u2019t fair criticism, though.\u00a0Pot shot\u00a0means criticism that is rather unfair. The sole objective of taking pot shots at somebody is to make them feel bad. My&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[393,2140,2139],"class_list":["post-73290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idioms","tag-english-idioms","tag-take-potshots","tag-take-potshots-at"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73291,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73290\/revisions\/73291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}