Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 209. The idiom today is up one's sleeve. Okay. Let's take a look at the note. If someone has something up one's sleeve, it is hidden or secret, but is usually kept in reserve for when it is needed. So you hold it in reserve, just in case you do need it. It could come in handy. Okay. Let's continue. They say this phrase is often used with other words such as ace. Yeah. We open here somebody may have an ace up their sleeve. All right.. We find out you know, because it originally comes from the card game. We might hear if somebody has more up their sleeve or somebody has something up their sleeve or somebody may have a surprise of their sleeve or somebody may have a trick up their sleeve. So there's a number of words that this this idiom could be used with. All right. Let's continue. This idiom originally comes from the idea of hiding a card up one's sleeve, especially in a poker game. We actually have seen this played out, especially in old westerns where a poker player may actually have an ace up his sleeve. Yeah. Well normally, if you're going to hide a card you want to hide you want to hide the card that has usually the most value or the most power. So aces are usually the most valuable card. So an ace would be the most likely card that you would hide. If you've got a hide one. You'd probably hide an ace, and we've seen this in a lot of the old cowboy movies and if somebody gets caught cheating. You're cheating you know, they caught them that they had an ace up their sleeve. I don't know there must have been about 10 different cowboy movies where I've seen a scene like this. Okay. Westerns, where a poker player may actually have an ace up his sleeve and use it at an opportune time. Well you know, of course maybe he placed some hands he still loses, but there may be there may be one time where the ace is needed to help him , you know, get a really good hand to win a hand. So that's when he would do it. He wouldn't do it every hand but he'll use it during that hand, you know to try to bet higher. And you know win more. It's it's definitely still cheating. During one of the poker hands. Yeah. Each time you know, the cards are dealt and somebody wins a pot that's a hand. Okay and let's look at a couple of examples here. Example number one. This seems too easy. Be careful. He must have something up his sleeve. All right. Yeah. So in this case this is something. We say somebody may have something up their sleeve. I don't know what that something is. But it's probably again it's probably something tricky. Or number two. We are running out of options. Meaning choices. I hope you still have some tricks up your sleeve. Yeah or I hope you still have an ace up your sleeve. That we can use and this is the way we usually use it. So it's pretty common. Again you can hear it with all those different words there. Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it was clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
A2 US sleeve poker hide card cheating idiom English Tutor Nick P Idioms (209) Up One's Sleeve 10 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/05/11 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary