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Anna Karenina vocabulary

7 idioms used

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where the shoe pinches: synonyms: bugbear ???

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► definition

Definition:

where the cause of trouble or difficulty is

Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (published 1908)

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Uses:

"No, dat he aint!—he aint find nowhar—dat's just whar de shoe pinch—my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor Massa Will."

Edgar Allan Poe. The Gold-Bug

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Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them.

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina

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For, God it wot, he sat full oft and sung,

When that his shoe full bitterly him wrung.

Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue (1400)