“He bought a cat in a sack.” 🔊

🇬🇧 What you'd actually say

“He bought it sight unseen and got burned.” 🔊

also: “He bought a pig in a poke.” · “He had no idea what he was getting.”

📖 Meaning

To buy or agree to something without checking it first — and regret it.

💡 Why it's funny

English has almost exactly the same idiom but with a pig, so the two languages agree that the sack is the problem and disagree only about the animal inside.

🧭 Closest English idiom

“To buy a pig in a poke.”

📝 Explanation

Used about second-hand purchases, contracts signed unread, or jobs accepted without asking questions.

🏛 Cultural context

Both the Ukrainian and the English idiom come from old market fraud, where a buyer was handed a tied sack that was supposed to contain a valuable animal.