Early in our relationship, I learned an Italian idiom from my husband: Climb up the mirrorliterally Climb on the mirror. (Yes, before you ask, I am guilty of this sometimes!)
Climb up the mirror
Looking for desperate excuses to defend yourself or the situation
Metaphorically, it refers to making desperate or far-fetched excuses to defend oneself, another person, or a situation. Just as it is impossible to climb on a mirror because of its smooth surface, it is impossible to make futile and ridiculous excuses to get out of trouble.
For example, imagine that you are late for work for the umpteenth time. You may not admit your mistake or provide a reasonable explanation. Instead, you may claim that you were late because your alarm clock didn't work, your car broke down, your grandmother was rushed to the hospital, all of these All happened on the same morning. In fact, you may have just overslept and not told the truth, you climb up the mirror Spewing out a string of elaborate and impossible excuses.
In English, the closest idiomatic expression is grasp at straws and dig yourself deeperbut none of them fully captured the essence of Italy's unique “mirror climbing” art.
You scramble because you don’t want to admit you were wrong.
You'll come up with all kinds of ridiculous excuses because you don't want to admit that you made a mistake.
Did you know that on social media, many Italians have started Replacement idioms and fictitious English nouns mirror climb? It even has its own hashtag: #mirrorclimbing!
Heather Broster is a graduate with honors in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, fluent in English and Italian, as well as varying degrees of fluency in Japanese, Welsh and French. Originally from Toronto, Heather has lived in several countries, notably Italy for six years. Her main research areas are language acquisition, education and bilingual teaching.
