Definition of couch potato : a lazy and inactive person especially : one who spends a great deal of time watching television Synonyms & Antonyms Example Sentences Learn More About couch potato
What does a couch potato refer to?
Definition of couch potato : a lazy and inactive person especially : one who spends a great deal of time watching television.
What is an example of a couch potato?
A couch potato is a lazy person. If your friend calls you a couch potato, she’s criticizing the amount of time you spend lying on your couch watching television. Although you can use the expression couch potato to simply mean “idler” or “layabout,” it usually refers specifically to someone who watches a whole lot of TV.
noun an idler who spends much time on a couch (usually watching television)
Is couch potato offensive?
Image for representational purpose only I am tired of being used as everyone’s punching bag. When my husband can’t make a call to someone due to insufficient balance in his account, he shouts at me. When my mother-in-law can’t watch her favourite serial on TV because of power cuts, she vents her anger on me.
Hereafter, I’ll not be anyone’s punching bag. What is the meaning of the term punching bag? Literally, a punching bag or punchbag is a stuffed cylindrical leather bag that is hung on a rope. Boxers and other sports persons punch them as part of exercise. Figuratively, it means any person on whom anger is vented by another person in an unjustified manner.
An alternative term for punching bag is ‘scapegoat’. If a person is made a scapegoat, they are blamed for the fault of another person. For example, some teachers are made a scapegoat for students’ poor performance in public exams. Here are examples of how ‘punching bag’ is used in sentences: • Whenever he makes a mistake, he shouts at his wife and blames her.
- The voiceless woman is her husband’s punching bag.
- As the Congress party won only 19 of the 70 seats it contested in Bihar, it was severely criticised by its allies.
- Recently, Congress has been every party’s punching bag.
- A few days ago, a friend asked me whether the term couch potato is an offensive term.
A person who is described as a couch potato spends a great deal of time watching TV and is inactive. Any lazy person can be called a couch potato. The term has a negative connotation because nobody wants to be called a couch potato. The term was first used in the 1970s by a comic artist who drew lazy characters called couch potatoes.
Is it an offensive term? Here is an interesting piece of news. According to the BBC, British farmers consider the term offensive. The farmers say that potatoes are healthy and are of the view that the expression portrays the vegetable as unhealthy. They say that it is unfair to use the term ‘couch potato’ to describe someone who is lazy.
They have held protests and demanded that the Oxford English Dictionary remove the term from the dictionary and use some other expression for idlers who waste their time watching TV but their demand has not been accepted by the publisher. This makes me raise the question whether the ‘potato’ is treated as a punching bag.
- Eating potato is good for health but being a couch potato is not good for health.
- Everyone should be proud of who they are and where they come from because America is a big melting pot of diverse ethnicities” What does the term melting pot mean? It literally means a pot in which different materials are mixed and melted.
The other meaning of the expression is ‘a place where people or ideas of different kinds get mixed together.’ It denotes pluralism and conflation.
What is the opposite of a couch potato?
a lazy person
a couch potato who refused to budge no matter what needed to be done
Synonyms for couch potato
deadbeat, do-nothing, drone, idler, layabout, lazybones, loafer, lotus-eater, slouch, slug, slugabed, sluggard
Words Related to couch potato
bum, good-for-nothing, ne’er-do-well
crawler, creeper, dawdler, laggard, putterer, slowpoke, snail, stick-in-the-mud, straggler
clock-watcher, goldbrick, malingerer, shirker, slacker
dallier, lingerer, loiterer, loller, lounger, saunterer
delayer, procrastinator
dropout, quitter
Near Antonyms for couch potato Antonyms for couch potato
What is a couch potato lifestyle?
Active couch potato: Know meaning and much more! – An active couch potato is a term used for those who hit the gym or exercise daily but spend maximum of the other wake hours sitting. Sitting for long hours is associated with several health issues including a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Staying physically active throughout the day is essential to stay fit Photo Credit: iStock Nutritionist and fitness expert Munmun Ganeriwal says in one of the recent IGTVs, “Most of us are seated throughout the day. Even if you are working out each morning and get back to a sedentary lifestyle for the rest of the day.
Is couch potato a metaphor?
Metaphor A comparison of two different things that does not use ‘like,’ or ‘as.’ -Bob is a couch potato. Hyperbole Exaggerated statements My birthday will never come!
What would happen if you were a couch potato Why?
Whether you’re a couch potato for one or six hours on any given day it still affects you. We all have periods where we become a couch potato for a while but for some of us, those periods are far too often and last a bit too long, and new research is showing that laying back and being a lazy couch potato is more detrimental to our health than we had previously thought.
New research from Tel Aviv University has found that preadipocyte cells, which are fat cell precursors turn into fat cells more quickly and create even more fat when you lie down or sit down. These long periods of sitting or resting horizontally where we put weight on parts of our bodies are referred to as times of mechanical stretching loads.
To simplify, being inactive causes your body to produce more fat in your fat cells, Essentially the cells themselves become larger and less efficient. this puts pressure on your body’s cells causes fat cells to spread out and grow bigger. What’s even more alarming about sitting or laying for a long duration of time is that new research is showing that rigorous exercising doesn’t counteract the long periods of sitting or laying.
A recent study found that men who reported spending two hours or more per day in front of the television had twice the risk of a heart attack or cardiac event than men who reported watching less television. Your risk of a heart attack or cardiac related event essentially doubles by watching two or more hours of television per day.
Not only that but men who spent four hours or more watching television daily had a 50% higher chance of dying from any cause and this study along with multiple other studies found that exercise did not negate the risk of television watching or the effects of the outcome.
- So what can you do? Watch much less tv and avoid being a couch potato in the first place, we’ll get to those tactics a bit later.
- So what actually happens when you sit or lay down for an extended period of time? 1.
- Immediately after sitting your calorie burning rate drops 1 calorie per minute while you sit.
This means that if you sit for an hour you burned 60 calories less that hour than if you were standing. If you stand 5 hours more each day (instead of sit or lay) you can burn 300 more calories each day.2. Your muscles weaken as electrical activity within the muscles diminishes.
If you are immobile and are sedentary (lay or sit) for a 24-hour period, a 40 percent reduction in glucose uptake in insulin occurs, which can eventually cause and lead to type 2 diabetes.3. You gain weight as your cells become more fatty. The body increases plasma triglycerides (which are fatty molecules), LDL cholesterol (known as ‘bad cholesterol’), and insulin resistance which means your body begins to produce more insulin because your body no longer accepts your insulin which stresses your Liver and Pancreas.4.
If you sit 6 hours per day or more you can experience all of these symptoms.
Who invented the term couch potato?
Meet Tom Iacino, the Man Who Coined the Phrase ‘Couch Potato’
When was the phrase couch potato first used?
Where does couch potato come from? – Couch potato first came into use as a slang term around 1980. In the ’80s, cartoonist Robert Armstrong trademarked the term and used it in cartoons that featured a potato character sitting on a sofa watching TV. Armstrong said he first heard it from his friend Tom Iacino, who said that it was just a simple joke he used to tease his friends who watched a lot of TV.
- Couch potato can be used as a general term for a lazy person, but it usually refers to a person who literally slouches on the couch all day, especially to watch the TV.
- The term always implies that it’s not time well spent.
- Someone who sat on the couch all day reading would not be called a couch potato,
It’s usually used as a mild term of disapproval, especially when suggesting that someone get up and go do something else. Since the word came into widespread use, many more ways of loafing around have been introduced, including, of course, sitting in front of a computer.
What do you call a very lazy person?
lazybones – noun idle person
beachcomber couch potato deadbeat do-nothing fainéant good-for-nothing goof-off idler layabout lazy person loafer lounger malingerer ne’er-do-well no-good shirker slacker slouch slugabed sluggard sponger wanderer waster wastrel
Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
What’s another name for couch potato?
Category: – most common Unique synonym (Drilling) To begin drilling an oil well; to drill by moving the drill bit and shaft up and down, or by raising and dropping a bit. Find another word for couch-potato, In this page you can discover 9 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for couch-potato, like: drone, goof off, lazy-bones, sofa spud, spud, televiewer, television viewer, TV-viewer and video-gazer.
What’s another name for potato?
What is another word for potato?
| new potato | root vegetable |
|---|---|
| spud | tater |
| tuber | earthapple |
| turnip | swede |
| carrot | parsnip |
Who invented the phrase couch potato?
Meet Tom Iacino, the Man Who Coined the Phrase ‘Couch Potato’
Is couch potato an idiom or metaphor?
You might like these other idioms – I continue to add idioms so check back soon for more or sign-up for my free newsletter to learn about new updates to my website.
Home Page › Idiom Examples › Idiom: couch potato
What type of figurative language is couch potato?
Idiom – An idiom (id-ee-uh-m) is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of the words that make it up, as in ‘He’s a couch potato,’ or ‘Hold your horses.’ Idioms do not present ‘like’ characteristics to other things as in other forms of figurative language.