Lee's English Blog

Today, I asked someone how long some work was going to take to do (how much time). His reply was, "How long's a piece of string?"

A piece of string can be long or short, so this figure of speech means that he didn't know how long it was going to take. He wasn't asking me about the length of a piece of string.

It's important to be careful when you use this expression because some people might think you are being sarcastic.

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