Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 272. The idiom today is to pay through the nose. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. Now if someone pays through the nose, he or she pays an excessive or exorbitant amount of money for something, especially in an unreasonable way or an unreasonable amount of money. Okay. Let's continue. The origin of this quote is believed to come from Ireland when the Danes , you know the Danes meaning the Danish conquered the Irish in the ninth century. They forced the Irish to pay a nose tax, a nose tax. Yeah. This is really real. They actually took a census. So they went around counting people by counting their noses. They took a census by counting noses. If any Irish refused to pay, they would slit their noses from the lip to the eyebrow. So they slit it all away from here probably up through the nose, up to the eyebrow here. Very terrible , very bad but anyway that's supposedly where the phrase came from. Okay. All right we got three examples. This is actually a pretty common phrase and we do hear about this a lot. So this would be one typical sort of example. Example number one. She made her husband pay through the nose in a divorce settlement. Yeah I've heard this many times in movies and shows and things like that. Number two. If you have a long stay in the hospital without insurance you will have to pay through the nose. Yeah. It's scary. Somebody getting a hospital bill that's you know, 10,000 20,000, 30,000 dollars or something like this. They make you pay through the nose. Okay and number three here. If you want to fly first-class, the airline will make you pay through the nose. Yeah. Nowadays sometimes it's not only double. I think sometimes it's actually triple the price of economy. Sometimes depending on the airline. But anyway the airline makes you pay through the nose either way. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it is clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
A2 US pay irish airline counting census unreasonable English Tutor Nick P Idioms (272) Pay Through the Nose 5 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/09/02 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary