A story with idioms

Så fungerar det

We want to use idioms the way native speakers do: naturally and not too often. An idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out from the individual words, such as let the cat out of the bag or under the weather.

Choose idioms that suit the situation and the register: most idioms are informal. One or two per paragraph is plenty; a text packed with idioms sounds unnatural. Check the exact form, because changing one word often spoils the expression.

I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I decided to call it a day.

Where do idioms come from?

Every language has expressions that make little sense if you translate them word for word. In English, people talk about letting the cat out of the bag, being under the weather or biting the bullet. These idioms are so common that most speakers never stop to ask where they came from. The answers are sometimes surprising, and sometimes nobody knows for sure. Take under the weather, which means feeling slightly ill. It is often linked to life at sea. According to one popular explanation, sailors who felt seasick were sent below deck, away from the stormy weather, to recover. Language historians point out, however, that this story is hard to prove, as is often the case with idioms. The origin of let the cat out of the bag is even less certain. One theory claims that dishonest traders at markets sold a cat in a bag instead of a piglet; if the cat escaped, the trick was revealed. It is a good story, but there is little evidence that this ever happened. Dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary simply record when an expression first appears in writing, which in this case was the middle of the eighteenth century. Some idioms, on the other hand, have a clearer history. Break the ice originally referred to breaking the ice on frozen rivers so that boats could get through. Over time, the meaning moved from boats to people: today we break the ice when we say something to make a nervous group feel more relaxed. Why do idioms survive for centuries? Perhaps because they are vivid. A picture of a cat jumping out of a bag is far more memorable than the plain words "telling something that should stay hidden". That is exactly what makes them fun to learn, and difficult to translate.

Källor

1. Kursplan i engelska, Lgr22, Skolverket