Be in the pink
- (a)To be very healthy
- (b)To be very colourful
- (c)To be very sad
- (d)To be very rich
Correct — A, to be very healthy. 'In the pink' is a shortening of the fuller phrase 'in the pink of health', so it describes someone in excellent physical condition.
- (b)To be very colourful — A literal reading of the colour word; the phrase says nothing about how anything looks.
- (c)To be very sad — Low spirits belong to a different colour — 'feeling blue' or 'down in the dumps'.
- (d)To be very rich — Money plays no part in this idiom; for wealth English says 'well off' or 'in the black'.
'In the pink' means in excellent health — an informal shortening of the older phrase 'in the pink of health'.
English uses several colours as fixed shorthand for a state: feeling blue for sadness, seeing red for anger, in the pink for good health, in the black or in the red for profit or debt. Learning them as one group turns colour-idiom questions into quick marks and stops the options from being confused with one another.
- The fuller form is 'in the pink of health' or 'in the pink of condition'.
- 'Feeling blue' means sad; 'seeing red' means very angry.
- 'In the black' means in profit; 'in the red' means in debt.
- Taking the colour literally and choosing 'colourful'.
- Mixing 'in the pink' up with 'feeling blue' or 'in the red', which mean quite different things.
Asked as an idioms-and-phrases item — choose the option that gives the meaning of the phrase.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'Feeling blue' means:
- (a)feeling cold
- (b)feeling sad
- (c)feeling proud
- (d)feeling healthy
Answer(b) feeling sad — blue is the fixed colour of low spirits in English idiom.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'As fit as a fiddle' means:
- (a)very musical
- (b)in very good health
- (c)extremely thin
- (d)well dressed
Answer(b) in very good health — the phrase is a close relative of 'in the pink'.