Question
Updated on
27 Nov 2022
- Simplified Chinese (China)
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English (US)
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English (UK)
Question about English (US)
What does When I was young my parents often foisted me upon a reluctant aunt for the weekend. mean?
What does When I was young my parents often foisted me upon a reluctant aunt for the weekend. mean?
What does "foist somebody upon somebody" mean?
Answers
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- English (US)
To foist someone (or something) on a person is to make that person receive or accept the person/thing being foisted. For example, many people dislike fruitcake, so if someone gives you a fruitcake in such a way that you can't refuse it, you might say "They foisted a fruitcake on me." So, in this case, the parents sent this person off to visit one or more aunts over the weekend, and the aunt(s) reluctantly hosted them.
Highly-rated answerer
- Simplified Chinese (China)
Could it be read as: To force sb to eat/ to do something. to visit sb ...?
- English (US)
@Lee_D237 Forcing is stronger than foisting. Foisting is kind of like forcing someone to take something, but not in a violent way. It's more like tricking someone into taking something, or using social pressure to induce them to take it. Like in my fruitcake example, the fruitcake is being foisted on me because I don't want to look rude by refusing to take it, but no one is shoving the fruitcake into my hands. Foisting doesn't have anything to do with eating, I just used fruitcake in my example because that's the kind of unwanted gift that might be foisted on someone.
To be clear, "foisting [person A] on [person B]" isn't forcing [person A] to do anything, it's pressuring [person B] to accept/host [person A]. So the child in the original example is like the fruitcake in my example. The child is being foisted on the aunts; it's the aunts who are pressured into hosting the child.
Highly-rated answerer
- Simplified Chinese (China)

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