mug's game | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Afoolish,profitless, orhopelessundertaking.1956,Anthony Burgess,Time for a Tiger(The Malayan Trilogy), published1972, page109:‘It's amug's game,’ said Crabbe.1988May 20, Strobe Talbot, “Inside Moves”, inTime:The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes the quest for defenses amug's game.2012, David Stevenson,FT Guide to Exchange Traded Funds and Index Funds:Although they aspired, like all natural-born gamblers, to taking a flutter and beating that system (they all loved the idea of tips, of course), they were sufficiently cynical to know it's amug's gameand that it was largely bound to fail.

Examples:

EN: - Not a chance, it's a mug's game.
ES: - No, solo tonteos.
EN: Daddy, you always said betting was a mug... mug's game.
ES: Papá, tú siempre dijiste que las apuestas eran una estafa... que eran un timo. Sí, lo sé, cariño.
EN: Ah, maybe the whole job's a mug's game.
ES: Puede que todo esto solo sea un juego de memos.
EN: Oh, I tell you, this is a mug's game.
ES: Oh, te lo diré..., ha sido cuento.
EN: - It's a mug's game.
ES: - Eso es cosa de idiotas.
EN: But it does just go to show that predicting the future is usually a mug's game.
ES: ¿Qué es esto, Joe?
EN: I jacked that lot in - it's a it's a mug's game, isn't it?
ES: Ya he dejado eso. Ha sido un atraco, ¿no?
EN: It's a mug's game.
ES: Es un juego para idiotas.
ES: Yo no. Es un juego para tontos.
EN: And that's why I have come to the conclusion that playing by the rules is a mug's game.
ES: Y es por eso que he llegado a la conclusión... de que jugar por las reglas es de tontos.
EN: It's a mug's game, you know?
ES: Es un juego de criminales, ¿sabe?
EN: This is Detective Constable Webster and he thinks gambling's a mug's game.
ES: ¿Éste? Éste es el agente Webster, y cree que las apuestas son un juego para tontos.
EN: Well you can tell him from me it's a mug's game. And besides, his radio's been on the blink all week.
ES: Y además, su radio estuvo averiada toda la semana.
EN: I don't believe in gambling, mug's game
ES: No creo en las apuestas, juegos para tontos.
EN: It's a mug's game, Mrs. Renton.
ES: Es un juego tonto, Sra. Renton.
EN: It is a mug's game, you need two miles of track... you need a car that will do 170 miles an hour, but in the name of science... we did it.
ES: Es un juego de tazas, necesitas 2 millas de camino... Necesitas un coche que vaya a 240 kilómetros por hora, pero en el nombre de la ciencia... lo hicimos.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).