to buy a pig in a poke, to be ripped off
O anel era falso, coitada, comprou gato por lebre!
The ring was fake, poor thing, she got ripped off!
The phrase literally means "to buy a cat instead of a hare." It dates from times of war and scarcity, when meat was dear: skinned, a cat and a hare are alike in size and shape, and dishonest merchants would marinate cat meat to mask its smell and pass it off as hare.
Falando's Idiom Trainer teaches you to recognize idiom meanings and create sentences using them, so you can speak like a Brazilian.
