strike a false note
Appearance
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]strike a false note (third-person singular simple present strikes a false note, present participle striking a false note, simple past and past participle struck a false note)
- (idiomatic) To give the impression of being insincere, incongruous or inappropriate.
- 1910, E. M. Forster, chapter 28, in Howards End[1], New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, page 293:
- But she crossed out “I do understand”; it struck a false note. Henry could not bear to be understood.
- 1960, Ian Fleming, “From a View To a Kill”, in For Your Eyes Only[2], London: Jonathan Cape:
- He dressed in a mannered fashion with turned-back cuffs and double slits to his coat, bow-ties and fancy waistcoats. He made a good-living, wine-and-food-society impression in which only the slow, rather cunning blue eyes struck a false note.
- 2000, Alan Bennett, “The Laying On of Hands”, in The Laying On of Hands: Stories[3], New York: Picador, published 2002, page 71:
- He knew what stories to whisper and when not to tell stories at all and knew, too, when the business was over, never to make reference to what had been said. ¶ Put simply this was a man who had learned never to strike a false note.