Meaning of object lesson | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A lesson taught (especially to young children) using a familiar or unusual object as a focus.
2. An example from real life that explains a principle or teaches a lesson.
3. Anything used as an example or lesson which serves to warn others as to the outcomes that result from a particular action or behavior, as exemplified by the fates of those who followed that course.

Equivalents

Examples

“Vertebrates are limited to two eyes each, but the variations they have⟳ played on this plain vanilla starting point⟳ are an object lesson in how much can be made from a little.”

“Let⟳ that be an object lesson to him.”

“Of the announcement, Osborne said: "They have⟳ spent a hundred billion pounds of public money and they've got a massive raspberry from everyone as far as I can see⟳. As a PR exercise, it's been an object lesson in how not to make⟳ a government announcement."”

“Yet China, like⟳ Russia, is now giving us an object lesson in the usefulness of having an open⟳ society, where strongmen don’t get⟳ to invent⟳ their own⟳ reality.”

“The U.K. is now an object lesson for other countries dealing with a dark triad of deindustrialization, degrowth, and denigration of foreigners.”

“Thames Water has become⟳ the latest object lesson in the predictable and predicted folly of privatised monopolies, aided by a regulator that’s an even bigger wet⟳ wipe than the fatbergs bunging up the sewers.”

CEFR level