English Help Online's Blog

This week’s idiom seems like it’s about doctors and hospitals, but actually it’s not. The expression is to “give someone a taste of their own medicine.” It means to do something negative to another person because they have done the same thing to us or someone else, and we want them to know how it feels. For example:

Julia often ignores people at the office that she doesn’t like. Let’s give her a taste of her own medicine and ignore her all week!

Frank often calls me terrible names, so yesterday I gave him a taste of his own medicine and called him “shorty”. He didn’t like it at all.

If we want to stop bullying in schools, I think people need to get together and give the bullies a taste of their own medicine. Then, maybe they would stop.

My supervisor is always making me work on Sundays. Well, he finally got a taste of his own medicine last week when his boss made him do the same thing! I couldn’t stop laughing!

In my final example, I’ve changed the expression slightly to “get a taste of his/her own medicine”. This is the way we use this expression in the passive voice.

In the second example, the slang term “shorty” refers to a person who is short in height. It’s considered very insulting to people who are not tall.