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View synonyms for throw a curve

throw a curve



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Idioms and Phrases

Surprise or outwit someone, as in They threw me a curve when they said that our department would be combined with yours . This colloquial term comes from baseball, where a pitcher tries to fool the batter by using a curve ball , which is thrown with sufficient spin to make it veer from its expected path. The term was transferred to other kinds of surprise, not necessarily unpleasant, in the mid-1900s.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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