Idioms are a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.
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Which day does “next Tuesday” refer to?
At what point does next Tuesday mean
the next Tuesday that will come to pass
and no longer
the Tuesday after the Tuesday that will come to pass`?
And, when does the meaning switch ...
19
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4answers
5k views
Why do we say “was supposed to” for “should have”?
I was supposed to do my homework, but I went out clubbing instead.
On a literal interpretation, supposed to suggests that other people (or indeed, myself) might have supposed (thought, imagined, ...
42
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11answers
3k views
Idiom: People caring about minor stuff while something terrible is happening
Imagine a situation in which the whole place is on fire, a bomb is about to explode, everyone is running for their lives and someone is checking his looks on the mirror... pretty inappropriate for the ...
27
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3answers
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Terms for collections of animals
As I watched the murder of crows sitting on the line above my house this evening, I got wondering where all of the collective nouns for animals (pod of whales, gaggle of geese, pride of lions) came ...
20
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23answers
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An idiom meaning someone's doing something useless and has no result at the end
In my native language, we use an idiom to warn someone that they're doing something which has no result at the end:
Trying to convince him is like squashing water ...
Is there any idiom in ...
13
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12answers
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Phrase for focusing on unimportant details
I'm looking for a idiom or saying that I could use when people are focusing too much on small details and not seeing the big picture.
A couple that come to mind are "being penny-wise and pound ...
24
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9answers
1k views
“Saving on the parrot's chocolate is futile”
In Catalan there is an expression "ser la xocolata del lloro" that can be translated as "saving by not giving chocolate to the parrot is futile", conveying the meaning that when a household wants to ...
12
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1answer
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63
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28answers
5k views
Is there an American English equivalent of the British idiom “carrying coals to Newcastle”?
I'm an American living in the Netherlands who is learning Dutch. There's an idiom in Dutch that describes performing a needless/futile activity, "water naar de zee dragen," which literally translates ...
5
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1answer
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How should “please find enclosed” be used?
In business writing and especially email, the phrase is often used as:
Please find enclosed our price list.
Please find attached the updated contract.
Please find herewith my expense ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
Best source for origins of expressions and idioms?
I'm often interested in the origins of English phrases, and I know that I can find answers by googling, and I can find good answers by asking here.
How can I find good answers myself? Are there any ...
17
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2answers
2k views
How did kool-aid come to be the drink of fanboys?
Why does Kool-Aid relate to being something's fanboy/fangirl?
11
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6answers
8k views
Etymology of 'teaching grandma to suck eggs'?
This is such a strange idiom, all I could find with a Google search was the meaning of it, but not where it came from. When you're telling somebody something they already know well, it's sometimes ...
8
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5answers
440 views
Do idioms pose an exception to normal definite and indefinite article usage?
I found this phrase in my biology textbook (emphasis added):
...in relation to Earth's history, 100,000 years or even a million years is the blink of an eye.
The part of the phrase in question ...
7
votes
2answers
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What is the origin of the phrase “you've got another thing/think coming”?
What is the origin of the phrase "you've got another thing coming"? And — perhaps more importantly — is it more correct than the alternative "you've got another think coming"?
5
votes
1answer
318 views
Is it all right to use “in hopes of” to mean “with the aim of”?
Recently I browsed through the definition of hope in New Oxford American Dictionary (provided by Apple in the dictionary app) to double confirm with its usage as I answered a word-choice question and ...
4
votes
6answers
631 views
In which countries is that “long time no see” greeting common?
I used to hear this greeting several times a day when in Singapore.
In other English-speaking countries, is this idiomatic expression known, do people consider it funny, or just a terrible ...
9
votes
2answers
2k views
Difference between “due to” and “thanks to”
When should "due to" be preferred over "thanks to", and vice versa? When can they be used interchangeably?
6
votes
3answers
406 views
Asking for an idiom according to literal translation
I translated a sentence into English:
When the details are ignored, the whole problem will be ignored unintentionally
Seems like a logical sentence that says when you don't consider all details ...
4
votes
3answers
2k views
An idiom for deriving pleasure from another's suffering
I believe it is what the Germans call "Schadenfreude". English itself has no such equivalent word. (Although it has been adopted as a loanword.)
Does an idiom exist that describes it?
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5answers
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Which is correct: “standing on line” or “standing in line”?
I'm curious to hear from folks in the the Northeast United States (or anyone, really) an explanation of why "standing on line" seems preferable to "standing in line" in the US northeast.
I imagine ...
14
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2answers
2k views
“Broken my duck”? Is this a common idiom/phrase?
I steal this phrase from a comment on Meta Stack Overflow:
yep, I think I've broken my duck or so to speak :) – Kev♦ 51 mins ago
The context is one of having been basically broken into a ...
10
votes
6answers
5k views
What does “if you will” mean?
A TV program says,
they started this accounting gimmick, if you will, and they...
What does "if you will" mean? Is it a short form of "if you will [a certain verb]"?
9
votes
7answers
684 views
What's a good phrase for “refining a process which is hopelessly broken”?
I'm looking for a turn of phrase to describe a situation where the powers that be wish to continue making small improvements to a process which, due to deep-rooted flaws, will never be close to ...
6
votes
2answers
395 views
Name for a type of idiom with two things joined (like “raining cats and dogs”, “bread and butter”)
I had heard, a number of years ago, that there is a name for an type of idiomatic expression in which two things are joined to refer to one thing.
An example of this would be “raining cats and dogs”. ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views
What does “new normal” mean?
From one of the survey result (IT related), I came across the following line:
Agile Development and
Service-Oriented-Architectures (SOA)
represent the “new normal.”
What does "new normal" ...
5
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5answers
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Is it 'Close to the chest' or 'Close to the vest'?
Apologies if this is a duplicate, I am just curious.
Are they both valid? Which originated first?
3
votes
3answers
595 views
“Put it at the backseat” or “Put it onto the backseat”?
What preposition should I use in the expression "put ___ the backseat"?
The sentence goes like this:
I have a few items on my plans, item A is the least important one, so I will put it ___ the ...
2
votes
2answers
8k views
What does “if and when” mean, and is it the same as “when and if”?
Rather than trying to describe my beef with this idiom, I will give a bunch of successively objectionable examples. None of these are taken from real life.
As I see it, if (and when) both "if" and ...
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20answers
3k views
Are there other idioms like “a stone's throw away” that both describe an activity and act as a measurement?
If something is quite close by, it could be described as being a stone's throw away; even closer might be a hop, skip and a jump. I'm interested in these "units" of measurement based on human action. ...
32
votes
4answers
3k views
What is the meaning of the phrase 'Here be dragons'?
What does here be dragons mean in the example below?
WARNING Here be dragons. Relative source binding can not only encourage
bad application practices, such as binding to things defined in ...
22
votes
3answers
3k views
Where did the expression “my two cents” come from?
I've seen "$.02", "2¢", "just my two cents", etc, similar in meaning to IMHO, except usually appended to the main text.
As the Ngram shows, it is only "two cents" that is popular in this usage:
...
32
votes
4answers
9k views
Which is correct, “buck naked” or “butt naked”?
"Butt naked" or "buck naked" both refer to completely naked, or do they? Where the phrase comes from I have no idea but that would be of interest.
This is a phrase I am too afraid to google and ...
30
votes
2answers
5k views
What does the phrase “Begging the question” mean?
What does the phrase "begging the question" really mean? And does it even matter if I use it correctly? Almost everyone just uses it as a synonym for "posing the question" these days.
25
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4answers
6k views
How does the phrase “used to” work, grammatically?
It is common to hear people say "used to" to indicate that they did something in the past but no longer do; for example, "I used to play basketball." How would "used to," used in that context, fit ...
17
votes
3answers
3k views
Why does “for good” mean “forever”?
A very recent and similar question was closed asks what "for good" means. While general reference can answer the question, I became curious as to the etymology of the idiom. Googling around got me ...
16
votes
9answers
813 views
Is there any idiomatic expression with the meaning “show all the hidden stuff”?
Which idiomatic phrase can be used to express 'showing all the hidden stuff' (it's supposed that nobody should find that out, some scandal things)?
12
votes
5answers
594 views
Can one “marry one's wife”?
I was vacantly reading the paper the other day when I came across a strange formation in the obituary: "he married his wife in 19XX". I was rather taken aback by this; surely he can't marry his own ...
8
votes
2answers
493 views
“I so much as look” doesn't make any sense to me
There is a conversation in Californication season 5, ep. 9 where Tyler talks to Charlie and Charlie says:
- I'd love to Tyler, but they watch me like a hawk here
- I so much as look at a ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
“She is gone” versus “she has gone”
When should I say "She is gone", and when should I say "She has gone" (and why)?
I think that when I mean "She went away and she's still there", it should be "She has gone". Are there exceptions ...
8
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3answers
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Difference between phrase, idiom and expression [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What is the difference between an expression and a phrase?
Difference between “phrase” and “idiom”
What is the difference between a phrase, an ...
5
votes
2answers
308 views
How acceptable is “fully fledged” as opposed to “full-fledged”?
As a native speaker of English, I had never heard the "fully" version until recently. Now I seem to hear it a lot, but only from non-native speakers. Are the two equally acceptable in semi-formal ...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
Origin of the idiom “go south”
What's the origin of the idiom go south? Why is it go south only? Why not go southwest or go east?
Are the direction-related idioms go south, go north, go east, and go west correlated?
Example, go ...
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2answers
2k views
What does “waxed rhapsodic” mean?
See context below:
Bloomberg is well known for his malapropisms and mispronunciations:
he's introduced former Yankee manager Joe Torre as "Joe Torres" [and] waxed
rhapsodic about the famous ...
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vote
1answer
4k views
This weekend vs Next weekend [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What day is next Tuesday?
Imagine that it's Monday, the 1st. The weekend would be the 7th & 8th. How do you refer properly to the coming weekend, "This weekend" or ...
14
votes
2answers
1k views
What's the reason for calling cheap seats at the theatre nosebleed seats?
I've never heard of this idiom before today and thought it was an especially curious one. What's the origin of calling the cheap seats the nosebleed seats at the theater?
12
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2answers
1k views
What does “boy” mean here?
Recently, in a magazine, I read the following line:
It's been an eventful year and boy, has it flown past!
My question is, what does the word "boy" mean here? Is it an idiom? What is its usage?
10
votes
11answers
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What's an idiom for doing something in an unnecessarily complicated way?
For an example, I'll quote C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat.
...
9
votes
4answers
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Meaning of “reach out to somebody”
The dictionary explains this as:
To show somebody that you are interested in them and/or want to help them
The explanation indicates the subject of the sentence is the one that offers help, but ...
9
votes
5answers
746 views
Should we worry about what precedes a preposition?
Should we always worry about what precedes a preposition?
Many times we come across people concerned with what preposition comes after a certain word.
A preposition's raison d'être is qualifying ...
