lead (one) up the garden path

(redirected from lead them up the garden path)

lead (one) up the garden path

To mislead or deceive one. Don't lead me up the garden path—tell me what is really going on here.

lead someone up the garden path

BRITISH or

lead someone down the garden path

AMERICAN

If someone leads you up the garden path, they deceive you by making you believe something which is not true. He led me up the garden path. He said the relationship with Penny was over but now he seems to be seeing her again. They led me down the garden path and made me believe there would be a job for me.

See also: garden, lead, path, someone, up

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

lead someone up the garden path

give someone misleading clues or signals. informal

The earliest (early 20th-century) examples of this phrase use just garden rather than garden path , which suggests that the original context was of someone enticing a person they wanted to seduce or flirt with out into a garden. A North American variant of the phrase is lead someone down the garden path .

See also: garden, lead, path, someone, up

lead somebody up the garden ˈpath

(informal) cause somebody to believe something that is not true; deceive somebody: I think you’re just leading us up the garden path — now, come on, tell us the truth! ♢ He had led her up the garden path, telling her he wasn’t married.

See also: garden, lead, path, somebody, up

garden path, to lead up/down the

To deceive, to trick. This expression, often put simply as “up the garden,” originated early in the twentieth century and tends to suggest a romantic or seductive enticement. Often found in popular novels of the 1930s and 1940s, it is less frequently heard today. See also primrose path.