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burn one's fingers
Idioms and Phrases
Harm oneself, as in I'm staying away from risky stocks; I've burned my fingers often enough . Some believe this expression came from a legend about a monkey who gets a cat to pull its chestnuts out of the fire (see cat's paw ); others hold it is from an English proverb: 鈥淏urn not thy fingers to snuff another's candle鈥 (James Howell, English Proverbs , 1659). [c. 1700]Example Sentences
I haven't the moral courage, and one can easily burn one's fingers at it, too.
By Robert E. MacAlarney It isn鈥檛 at all pleasant to burn one鈥檚 fingers, but it鈥檚 worth while burning them now and then, if you have to be scorched to be near a particularly attractive fire; at least I鈥檝e found it that way.
鈥淟ooks as if it would burn one鈥檚 fingers,鈥 said Joe, handling the beautiful piece of rotten, glowing wood.
If I put a piece of lime obtained from this chalk into the gas, you see we get a pretty hot flame, which would burn one's fingers a good deal But now let me subject a piece of it to the joint action of oxygen and hydrogen.
They were always "sure that the weather was getting quite hot," and "it must be summer, for they heard the sparrows chirping every morning the first thing," and they "thought they had seen a swallow," and "the windows got so warm with the sunshine, Nurse declared they were enough to burn one's fingers:" and so the poor little things teazed themselves and everybody else, every year, in their hurry to get back to their western home.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from 亚洲网紅露点 Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 漏 Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage庐 Idioms Dictionary copyright 漏 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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