Trip sb up on their way

[moonlike]

Hi
In the following extract does the underlined part mean "follow somebody"?


'What I'm more interested in is tripping people up on their way to the supermarket because I think that part of the problem with our culture at the moment is that we deal in a culture of you know snacking.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Rover_KE]

I've never known 'tripping people up' to mean 'follow somebody'.

Where did you encounter that very odd sentence?

EDIT: I've just read your earlier posts and discovered the source:

In a text Antony Gormley is talking about one of his works of art, The Angel of the North.

I can't help feeling the original includes some punctuation round 'you know'.

Rover

 

[moonlike]

Where did you encounter that very odd sentence?

I can't help feeling the original includes some punctuation round 'you know'.

Rover

I'm afraid. I checked the real text (it was a tape script) and it's exactly like the one I've mentioned.

 

[emsr2d2]

If it was a transcript and the speaker really didn't pause at all around the words "you know", then it might appear in the transcript as simple consecutive words. The transcriber should have known better though!

I find it slightly bizarre that the piece you quoted would come from a larger piece about the sculptor of the Angel of the North. It sounded to me as if it was written by someone who helps other people lose weight for a living. They talk about people "snacking" so I assumed that with "tripping them up" they meant "catching them out" somehow. Perhaps they were caught eating a snack in the car on the way to the supermarket while they were supposed to be being more careful about what they eat in order to lose weight.

 

[moonlike]

Antony Gormley was talking about the importance of his sculptures and their impacts on people. I inhered from his opinion that he's quite concerned about people's aesthetic sense or the pace of life. To me he thinks people are just trying to survive in this modern fast world and have no time to reflect on their lives and he hopes his works can be of help here.