Could you translate this into something less idiomatic for me? I already had to look up "A&E" earlier, and after racking my brain I'm finally able to guess that "snapped on a breather" here means "photographed while on break"*, but the rest eludes me.mendipman wrote:He must’ve been snapped on a breather from double digging his allotment.
*Yanks use "breather" for "break" too, but at least where I live, "snapped" for "photographed" is uncommon at best. Idiomatically, usually "snapped" for us is when one has suddenly and dramatically become unhinged from stress, like the snapping of a twig; we might say, "I don't know; all of a sudden he just snapped." Or we'll use it to mean speaking abruptly and sharply to someone, as in "There's no reason to snap at me like that." Neither is really the same as the other, although they can often go hand in hand. So anyway, the combination of "snapped" and "breather" threw both into some doubt for me for a bit. Needless to say the past participle only increased my confusion at first, but eventually - once I remembered the word "snapshot" - it provided the key.