student asking question

What does "scratch the surface" mean?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"Scratch the surface" is to do or find out only a small part, which is not enough to understand or solve the problem. When you say you "barely scratched the surface", it means that you found almost nothing or so small that is is not change anything. Here are some examples of "scratch the surface". Ex: We barely scratched the surface of the mysteries in space. Ex: I feel like I only scratched the surface until now. I am still struggling with solving questions.

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