An idiom is a group of common words or phrase with a culturally understood meaning that completely differs from what its combined words’ denotations would suggest. English idioms and their meanings is different from the meanings of actual words.
For example, an English speaker would understand the phrase “to rain cats and dogs” which means “to rain very heavily” and not about actually rain of cats and dogs. It is very difficult for a non-English speaker to understand the real meaning of these idiom if they did not already know these idioms!
Here are 10 of commonly used English idioms and their meanings. Let’s see how many of them you know.
As cool as a cucumber
Very calm and composed and untroubled by stress.
Hold your horses
Wait a moment.
A piece of cake
Something very easy to do.
Heart in your mouth
Extremely frightened or anxious.
Head in the clouds
Living in a fantasy.
Bob’s your uncle
It’s as simple as that.
Kick the bucket
To die.
Blue in the face
Weakened or tired after trying many times.
A storm in a teacup
A big fuss made about something of little importance.
Dead as a doornail
Completely dead or unusable.
These illustrations are created by Roisin Hahessy, an English teacher currently living in Brazil. When she was trying to learn a new language, it made her think more about the English language.
“When I stopped to think about some English idioms and their literal meaning, I found some of them very funny and thought it would be a nice idea to pick a few of the most common idioms and illustrate them.”
So how many of them you knew already? Let me know.
Source: Roisin Hahessy
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