As a language lover, idioms for me are the secret sauce that keeps English entertaining and connected across generations. If learning a language is a pedantic pursuit based on a lot of memorization, then idioms are that last step of immersion that defies book study. In your writing, idioms and foreign-language terms are a way of bringing authenticity and colour to your text. They communicate something about your personality and voice, and importantly, they are uncommon in AI-generated writing.
Spill the beans. It was a piece of cake.
Bite the bullet. Grab a bull by its horns. Throw in the towel.
Dog days of summer. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Shoot the breeze. Wind at your back.
Turn the other cheek. Go toe-to-toe. See eye-to-eye. A pain in the neck.
Those are old classics, many of them vernacular. Newer idioms reveal cultural shifts and our evolving ways of communicating.
YOLO, from texting.
Glow up. Touch grass.
Main character energy. Bucket list. Jump the couch.
Hit different. Clap back. Throw shade.
Been a hot minute. Stop ghosting me.
As a sandwich-generation (is that an idiom itself?) dweller, I often act as an interpreter between my parents’ boomer idioms and my teenagers’ gen-Z idioms. And as an English-language tutor, I know that idioms truly defy mastery. I consider myself a student! Malapropims (the misuse of a word or phrase, often an idiom) are one of the things I look out for as an editor, so I can nip it in the bud (not butt!).
This English Council study provides great insight on the popularity of idioms across different generations. They also produced an amusing video of people trying to guess the meaning and origins of idioms.
As an editor and writing tutor, I also encourage my authors to use foreign-language terms to add colour and context to their writing. A term of affection (beti, didi), a culinary reference, or a language-specific term that does not have an English equivalent can be incredibly powerful in evoking a specific setting, or conveying a meaning. These terms should be used judiciously to avoid reader confusion, and should be italicized to tell the reader that the term is foreign. If the context does not provide sufficient explanation, you can also include a bracketed translation.
Here are a few favourites of mine that don’t have English equivalents:
My schadenfreude (German) was undeniable when I heard that my sister had also failed her driving test.
Warm socks and a dog on my lap bring me hygge (Danish).
I don’t consider my tsundoku (Japanese) to be hoarding so much as it is interior decorating, with books instead of art.
Every good comedy features a schlimazl (Yiddish).
Do you recognize the terms? If not, look them up to find out their specific meaning. Here’s a great list of more foreign words without equivalents.
What is your favourite idiom? I love them all, but “elephant in the room” is just so impenetrable/not obvious to an ESL learner, and so vivid in its imagery, that I will give it a thumbs up. What is one that you have misused, or struggled to understand? “Who let the cat out of the bag” and “dog days of summer” both stumped me before the days of easy Internet searches!
So on behalf of my dog Chico, which photo better captures the meaning of dog days of summer?
Photo credit for banner photo of horse Garry Knight.
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