"Led Up the Garden Path" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms
0:00 - How to Say, "Led Up the Garden Path"
0:38 - Examples of "Led Up the Garden Path"
1:21 - Meaning of "Led Up the Garden Path"
2:12 - What is a "garden-path sentence"?
3:22 - Origin of "Led Up the Garden Path"
6:04 - More Examples of "Led Up the Garden Path"
6:47 - Conclusion
“Led up the garden path.”
If someone says that they were “led up the garden path”, or “led down the garden path”, it means that they were deceived, tricked, cheated.
This idiom is pretty common in certain dialects of English, from Canada to Australia and back to the USA. However, it seems to not be that common in Indian, Filipino or Singaporean English.
“I was led up the garden path by the salesperson at the electronics store,” your brother might say after returning home with a trunk full of new gadgets.
Maybe you’re chatting with your best friend about her recent breakup, “He led me up the garden path for years, but I finally realized that he’s not all that he seems.”
“Don’t let them lead you up the garden path during today’s consultation,” your boss might tell you before a big meeting with a supplier.
As you can see, being “led up the garden path” or “led down the garden path” means that you were duped, taken in, hoodwinked.
On the other hand, if you “lead someone up/down the garden path”, you’ve caused them to proceed wrongly, misguided them, or lead them on.
Being led up the garden path doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve been completely swindled, fooled or outwitted - it can also mean that you were not told the complete truth, or that you were led to believe a mix of truth and lies, facts and falsehoods.
There is also a type of sentence called a “garden-path sentence”, which initially leads the reader to misinterpret the meaning, often in funny, amusing, hilarious ways (whether intentional or not).
For example, “Fat people eat accumulates,” which sounds like a sentence about fat people, but is in fact saying that the fat we eat, accumulates in our bodies.
“Times flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana,” was written intentionally to provide amusement, but can you guess its logical meaning?
Another amusing garden-path sentence is, “Which eye drops on the shelf?” which is simply a question about which bottle of eye drops to choose amongst many!
The idiom, “led up the garden path” is believed to originate in England before the 20th century, at a time when most village homes had vegetable gardens and accompanying paths.
At the time, weddings usually took place in gardens; villagers would often help find a groom for an unattractive woman by leading a bachelor down a garden path to the veiled bride.
Another, less interesting theory is that the idiom alludes to the distracting beauty of a garden. Akin to when you’re in a good mood, being easily persuaded to do things you otherwise wouldn’t.
Perhaps, then, you shouldn’t let your mood dictate your choices! Or maybe, use this knowledge to your advantage and wait until someone is in a good mood to ask for something from them.
The idiom, “led up the garden path”, without a doubt has equivalents in other languages, as humans have a long history of trickery, deceit, cunning.
In Chinese, you’d say that you “hid someone’s head in a drum”. After all, if your head is in a drum, you’d blindly depend on others to lead you.
You’d “throw dust in someone’s eyes” in Hindi, if you were leading them down the garden path.
In Persian, you’d “rub juice on someone’s head”, because in ancient times, it was thought that honey had miraculous properties; it could cure baldness and give strength back to a woman who had just given birth…
… but of course, honey was rare and expensive for the common folk, so swindlers looking to make a quick buck would rub juice instead of honey upon customers’ heads.
You might “drive someone through the forest” in Ukrainian, for obvious reasons!
“This neighbourhood is not what I expected, I think our real estate agent led us up the garden path,” you might be complaining to your spouse.
Perhaps you’re helping your mom to renovate something in her house and it’s taking a long time, “I think mom has led me down the garden path with this ‘small project’!”
“I think we’ve been led up the garden path!” you might exclaim to your husband after experiencing your first winter as an immigrant in Canada.
So, the next time you’ve been fooled, bamboozled, swindled - even if not so seriously - you can say that you were “led up the garden path” or “led down the garden path”.
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References: https://tinyurl.com/48hystz9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-...
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https://lyricstranslate.com/en/idiom/...
https://tinyurl.com/2p95x3mb
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/...
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