"Taken for a Ride" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms
0:00 - How to Say, “Taken for a ride.”
0:15 - Examples of “Taken for a ride.”
1:03 - Meaning of “Taken for a ride.”
1:27 - Origin of “Taken for a ride.”
3:24 - More Examples of “Taken for a ride.”
4:10 - Conclusion
“Taken for a ride.”
If someone says that you were “taken for a ride”, it means that you were cheated, swindled, fooled.
“Ummm... organic vegetables aren’t necessarily pesticide free, you’ve been taken for a ride,” you might be telling your friend that is spending extra money on groceries.
Maybe your grandma is telling you that putting onion and garlic in your socks while you sleep will cure your cold, “Grandma, whoever told you that is trying to take you for a ride!”
“Don’t think that I can be taken for a ride! Your lame sales tactics aren’t gonna work with me,” you might say to a used car salesman.
As you can tell, to be “taken for a ride”, means to be lied to, deceived, misled.
“Taken for a ride” is an idiom found throughout most dialects of English and is above average in terms of commonness.
The idiom, “taken for a ride”, as it is used today has its origins in 1920s Newfoundland, Canada and meant the same thing back then as it does today.
At around the same time, “taken for a ride” was used by mobsters in the USA to mean literally taking someone for a ride in a car… a one-way car ride to their execution.
Thankfully, if you hear today that someone was taken for a ride, it’ll simply mean that they were hoodwinked, hoaxed, hornswoggled and not murdered.
Trying to make money or gain advantage by taking people for a ride has happened throughout history and throughout cultures, so it’s no surprise that there are equivalent idioms in many other languages.
In Russian, you’d be “twisted round one’s little finger” if you fell victim to a ruse, trick, ploy.
Perhaps instead of taken for a ride, you’d be “tied up together with a bear”, in Germany.
In Swedish, if you try to fool, swindle, cheat someone, you will “bring them behind the light”.
You might be “hit on the back of the neck” instead of taken for a ride, in Arabic.
“I think we were taken for a ride by the travel agency, this place is not nearly as beautiful or clean as they made it out to be!” you might say to your friend while on a package vacation.
Perhaps you’re giving business advice to your friend, “Customers won’t come back and certainly won’t recommend your shop if you keep taking them for a ride!”
“Can you come with me? I don’t want to be taken for a ride,” your grandma might ask you to go with her to buy a new computer.
So, the next time someone is cheated, swindled, bamboozled, tricked, gypped, just say that they were “taken for a ride”.
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References: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/t...
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/idiom/...
https://arabic.desert-sky.net/colloq....