Daily Idioms & Phrases From The Hindu: 4 August 2017

1: Buck the odds

Meaning: To buck the odds means to go against the odds. Despite the odds not being in your favour, you still won.
Example: Given the manner she has been bucking the odds, nothing seems impossible for the brave Jyotika far far away from the glitz-laden metros.

2: Break through

Meaning: If you break through, you achieve success even though there are difficulties and obstacles.
Example: Indeed , the shy Jyothika has a heart larger than her small frame.Given her background and modest means, she has been breaking through barriers.

3: Miss the cut

Meaning: (golf)to achieve a greater score after the first two rounds of a strokeplay tournament than that required to play in the remaining two rounds
Example: He arrives here after having missed the cut at the Irish and scottish opens , but then he was in similarly wretched form before the secured the Indian open in March

4: Rule out

Meaning: to stop considering something as a possibility
Example: Mr.Tillerson did not rule out a military strike against North Korea in remarks that were overall not strident at the state department

5: Cut to the size

Meaning: to make someone or something less important or detailed
Example: Has Digvijaya Singh been cut to size?

6: Scrape through

Meaning: to move through something, scraping or rubbing the sides, to get by something just barely; to pass a test just barely.
Example: The car, going at a very high speed, scraped through the tunnel. It just managed to scrape through
Alice passed the test, but she just scraped through it. I just scraped through my calculus test.

7: knock on the door of

Meaning: to be very close to achieving
Example: The Income – tax raids on the premises of Energy Minister D.K.Shivakumar and his close aides have sent shock waves among leaders of the ruling congress in Karnataka, with apprehensions of taxmen soon knocking on their doors.

8: Pulled out

Meaning: withdraw from an undertaking.
Example:: While the Jaiprakash Associates led consortium, including IBM and Israel’s tower semiconductor, had pulled out in March last year, things were not moving ahead for the consortium led by HSMC Technologies, according to the sources

9: On a knife’s edge

Meaning: if a person or organization is on a knife-edge, they are in a difficult situation and are worried about what will happen in the future
Example: She's been living on a knife-edge since her ex-husband was released from prison last month. The theatre is on a financial knife-edge and must sell 75% of its seats every night to survive.

10: Hinged on

Meaning: to depend on someone or something; to depend on what someone or something does
Example: The Monetary Policy Committee’s majority decision hinged on the observation that some “upside risks to inflation have either reduced or not materialized “