EnglishClub ESL Forums

Dear teacher,

Animals, of course, have no say in whether they "get chipped," as the promoters of the technology call the simple insertion process. But no device maker has yet been able to create a market for human implantable tags like VeriChip, which are the size of a grain of rice and are inserted just under the skin of the arm or hand with a syringe.

Q : Is "have no say in" an idiom? But I can't find it in a dictionary. It refers to "say", doesn't it? When it comes to a structure, "as the..process" modifies the sentence "Animals..chipped", doesn't it?





All the best,

Yes, it is an idiomatic expression meaning 'have no power to determine matters concerning...'.

The as-clause here is a kind of variant sentential clause, referring to the verb phrase ''get chipped", where 'as' stands as object complement to 'call'.