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Victoria
Do I understand “eyeball” and “be/go up the spout” correctly? My examples: 1. “Making these bread rolls I didn’t have any kitchen scale at hand, so that I just eyeballed all the necessary ingredients.” (It means - I made a visual guess) 2. “I planned a lot of things to do but woken up in a terrible pain in my back I understood that my big plans went up the spout.” (It means- my plans were destroyed)
May 3, 2021 6:03 AM
Answers · 10
2
1) I would say: Making these bread rolls I didn’t have any kitchen scale at hand, to check the necessary ingredients, so I just did it "by guesswork". -I don't think you can use the word eyeball in this context: you can "eyeball someone" - or look at them very closely. -You could "eyeball a restaurant menu" to decide which items you wanted, - But, I don't think you can use eyeball to refer to evaluating the weight of ingredients in a recipe: i.e. guessing the approximate weight. 2) I would say: I planned to do a lot of things, but woke up with a terrible pain in my back. Then I understood that (all) my big plans were (or: "had gone") up the spout.
May 3, 2021
1
Yes on number 1. Number 2 - you have probably understood correctly, but I have never heard that expression in almost 60 years.
May 3, 2021
1
Your meaning of eyeball is correct, but your use of it isn’t quite. You would ‘eyeball’ an amount not the ingredients themselves. I hope these taste OK - I eyeballed the amounts when mixing the dough. If you don’t have a measuring cup, just eyeball it. (Estimate the amounts) How many people are there? I don’t know. I’ll start counting. Don’t do that. Just give me an eyeball estimate. I’ve never heard of the other expression.
May 5, 2021
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