[Idiom] Which of these idioms is most commonly used in English?

[EveJK]

Hi everybody,

I'm currently trying to translate an idiom into English but every dictionary has different suggestions, so I don't know, which of the following examples would be actually used in real life:

A) "They are making a fool out of him."

B) "They are playing him for a fool."

C) "They are giving him the runaround."

D) "They are leading him a merry dance."



I think I heard A) and B) before, but they are not even the first suggestions by dictionaries.

Which of those would be most commonly used or is there another idiom, that would be better and has a similar meaning?

Thanks!
Eve

 

[Rover_KE]

Why don't you post the German idiom in the Other Languages forum.

It's impossible for us to say without knowing what you are trying to translate.

 

[EveJK]

It doesn't really matter to me what the correct translation would be. This is a private work, so nobody will correct me.
All of the above would work for what I want to say.

I just wanted to know which one of the above would be most commonly used.

 

[GoesStation]

D is very old-fashioned and never used in contemporary American English. C would probably be the most common, followed by A.

 

[EveJK]

Thank you!
That's what I wanted to know :-D.
The dictionary never tells you, if people only used the words 200 years ago ;D.

 

[Tdol]

D is very old-fashioned in BrE too.

If you want to track usage over time, the Ngram site is very good:

https://books.google.com/ngrams

It searches Google Books over time for a phrase and plots it on a graph.