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id | category | idiom | description |
---|---|---|---|
1201 | Food | Go bananas | If you go bananas, you are wild with excitement, anxiety, or worry. |
1202 | Food | Go fry an egg | (USA) This is used to tell someone to go away and leave you alone. |
1203 | Food | Go nuts | If someone goes nuts, they get excited over something. |
1204 | Food | Go pear-shaped | If things have gone wrong, they have gone pear-shaped. |
1205 | Food | Go pound salt | (USA) This means Get lost or Go away(Go pound sand is also used.) |
1206 | Food | Gone pear-shaped | (UK) If things have gone pear-shaped they have either gone wrong or produced an unexpected and unwanted result. |
1207 | Food | Good egg | A person who can be relied on is a good egg. Bad egg is the opposite. |
1208 | Food | Grain of salt | If you should take something with a grain of salt, you shouldnt necessarily believe it all. (pinch of salt is an alternative) |
1209 | Food | Gravy train | If someone is on the gravy train, they have found and easy way to make lots of money. |
1210 | Food | Half a loaf is better than no bread | It means that getting part of what you want is better than getting nothing at all. |
1211 | Food | Hard cheese | (UK) Hard cheese means hard luck. |
1212 | Food | Have your cake and eat it too | If someone wants to have their cake and eat it too, they want everything their way, especially when their wishes are contradictory. |
1213 | Food | Have your lunch handed to you | If you have you lunch handed to you, you are outperformed and shown up by someone better. |
1214 | Food | Hot potato | A problem or issue that is very controversial and no one wants to deal with is a hot potato. |
1215 | Food | How do you like them apples | (USA) This idiomatic expression is used to express surprise or shock at something that has happened. It can also be used to boast about something you have done. |
1216 | Food | I should cocoa | (UK) This idiom comes from I should think so, but is normally used sarcastically to mean the opposite. |
1217 | Food | Icing on the cake | This expression is used to refer to something good that happens on top of an already good thing or situation. |
1218 | Food | If you are given lemons make lemonade | Always try and make the best out of a bad situation. With some ingenuity you can make a bad situation useful. |
1219 | Food | In a nutshell | This idiom is used to introduce a concise summary. |
1220 | Food | In a pickle | If you are in a pickle, you are in some trouble or a mess. |
1221 | Food | In the gravy | If youre in the gravy, youre rich and make money easily. |
1222 | Food | In the soup | If youre in the soup, youre in trouble. |
1223 | Food | It's no use crying over spilt milk | This idiom means that getting upset after something has gone wrong is pointless; it cant be changed so it should be accepted. |
1224 | Food | Jam on your face | If you say that someone has jam on their face, they appear to be caught, embarrassed or found guilty. |
1225 | Food | Jam tomorrow | (UK) This idiom is used when people promise good things for the future that will never come. |
1226 | Food | Keen as mustard | (UK) If someone is very enthusiastic, they are as keen as mustard. |
1227 | Food | Know which side one's bread is buttered on | If you know which side ones bread is buttered on, you know where your interests lie and will act accordingly to protect or further them. |
1228 | Food | Know your onions | If someone is very well-informed about something, they know their onions. |
1229 | Food | Laugh to see a pudding crawl | (UK) Someone who would laugh to see a pudding crawl is easily amused and will laugh at anything. |
1230 | Food | Life is just a bowl of cherries | This idiom means that life is simple and pleasant. |
1231 | Food | Like giving a donkey strawberries | (UK) If something is like giving a donkey strawberries, people fail to appreciate its value. |
1232 | Food | Like green corn through the new maid | (USA) If something is very fast, it is like green corn through the new maid. |
1233 | Food | Like nailing jello to the wall | (USA) Describes a task that is very difficult because the parameters keep changing or because someone is being evasive. |
1234 | Food | Like peas in a pod | If people or things are like peas in a pod, they look identical. |
1235 | Food | Like taking candy from a baby | (USA) If something is like taking candy from a baby, it is very easy to do. |
1236 | Food | Like two peas in a pod | Things that are like two peas in a pod are very similar or identical, |
1237 | Food | Like watching sausage getting made | If something is like watching sausages getting made, unpleasant truths about it emerge that make it much less appealing. The idea is that if people watched sausages getting made, they would probably be less fond of them. |
1238 | Food | Lose your lunch | (UK) If you lose your lunch, you vomit. |
1239 | Food | Low-hanging fruit | Low-hanging fruit are things that are easily achieved. |
1240 | Food | Make a meal | If someone makes a meal of something, they spend too long doing it or make it look more difficult than it really is. |
1241 | Food | Meat and drink | If something is meat and drink to you, you enjoy it and are naturally good at it, though many find it difficult. |
1242 | Food | Meat and potatoes | The meat and potatoes is the most important part of something. A meat and potatoes person is someone who prefers plain things to fancy ones. |
1243 | Food | Milk run | A milk run is a short trip, stopping in a number of places. |
1244 | Food | Mutton dressed as lamb | Mutton dressed as lamb is term for middle-aged or elderly people trying to look younger. |
1245 | Food | Nest egg | If you have some money saved for the future, it is a nest egg. |
1246 | Food | Nice as pie | If a person is nice as pie, they are surprisingly very kind and friendly. "After our argument, she was nice as pie!" |
1247 | Food | Not give a fig | If you dont give a fig about something, you dont care about it at all, especially used to express how little one cares about anothers opinions or actions. |
1248 | Food | Not know beans about | (USA) If someone doesnt know beans about something, they know nothing about it. |
1249 | Food | Not my cup of tea | If something is not your cup of tea, you dont like it very much. |
1250 | Food | Nutty as a fruitcake | Someone whos nutty as a fruitcake is irrational or crazy. (This can be shortened to a fruitcake.) |
1251 | Food | One bad apple | The full form of this proverb is one bad apple spoils the barrel, meaning that a bad person, policy, etc, can ruin everything around it. |
1252 | Food | One man's meat is another man's poison | This idiom means that one person can like something very much, but another can hate it. |
1253 | Food | Out to lunch | If someones out to lunch, they are crazy or out of touch. |
1254 | Food | Over-egg the pudding | (UK) If you over-egg the pudding, you spoil something by trying to improve it excessively. It is also used nowadays with the meaning of making something look bigger or more important than it really is. (Over-egg alone is often used in this sense.) |
1255 | Food | Packed like sardines | If a place is extremely crowded, people are packed like sardines, or packed in like sardines. |
1256 | Food | Pay peanuts | If some is paid peanuts, their salary is very low. |
1257 | Food | Pea soup | Pea soup or pea souper can be used to describe dense fog. |
1258 | Food | Peanut gallery | An audience that interrupts, boos or heckles a performer, speaker, etc, is a peanut gallery. |
1259 | Food | Pie in the sky | If an idea or scheme is pie in the sky, it is utterly impractical. |
1260 | Food | Piece of cake | If something is a piece of cake, it is really easy. |
1261 | Food | Pieces of the same cake | Pieces of the same cake are things that have the same characteristics or qualities. |
1262 | Food | Pinch of salt | If what someone says should be taken with a pinch of salt, then they exaggerate and distort things, so what they say shouldnt be believed unquestioningly. (with a grain of salt is an alternative.) |
1263 | Food | Polish the apples | (USA) Someone who polishes the apples with someone, tries to get into that persons favor. |
1264 | Food | Polishing peanuts | To work very hard at something for little or no return. In other words, wasting time on work which will not yield reasonable value. |
1265 | Food | Proof of the pudding is in the eating | This means that something can only be judged when it is tested or by its results. (It is often shortened to Proof of the pudding.) |
1266 | Food | Pull the fat from the fire | If you pull the fat from the fire, you help someone in a difficult situation. |
1267 | Food | Put all your eggs in one basket | If you put all your eggs in one basket, you risk everything on a single opportunity which, like eggs breaking, could go wrong. |
1268 | Food | Put some mustard on it! | (USA) Its used to encourage someone to throw a ball like a baseball hard or fast. |
1269 | Food | Quarrel with bread and butter | Bread and butter, here, indicate the means of one’s living. (That is why we say ‘he is the bread winner of the family’). If a sub-ordinate in an organisation is quarrelsome or if he is not patient enough to bear the reprimand he deserves, gets angry and retorts or provokes the higher-up, the top man dismisses him from the job. So, he loses the job that gave him bread and butter. Hence we say, he quarrelled with bread and butter (manager or the top man) and lost his job. |
1270 | Food | Real plum | A real plum is a good opportunity. |
1271 | Food | Recipe for disaster | A recipe for disaster is a mixture of people and events that could only possibly result in trouble. |
1272 | Food | Rest is gravy | (USA) If the rest is gravy, it is easy and straightforward once you have reached that stage. |
1273 | Food | Rice missionary | A rice missionary gives food to hungry people as a way of converting them to Christianity. |
1274 | Food | Salad days | Your salad days are an especially happy period of your life. |
1275 | Food | Salt in a wound | If you rub salt in a wound, you make someone feel bad about something that is already a painful experience. Pour salt on a wound is an alternative form of the idiom. |
1276 | Food | Salt of the earth | People who are salt of the earth are decent, dependable and unpretentious. |
1277 | Food | Save someone's bacon | If something saves your bacon, it saves your life or rescues you from a desperate situation. People can also save your bacon. |
1278 | Food | Sell like hot cakes | If a product is selling very well, it is selling like hot cakes. |
1279 | Food | Sell like hotcakes | If something is selling like hotcakes, it is very popular and selling very well. |
1280 | Food | Sell your birthright for a mess of pottage | If a person sells their birthright for a mess of pottage, they accept some trivial financial or other gain, but lose something much more important. Sell your soul for a mess of pottage is an alternative form. |
1281 | Food | Separate the wheat from the chaff | When you separate the wheat from the chaff, you select what is useful or valuable and reject what is useless or worthless. |
1282 | Food | Settled on your lees | This is an old biblical idiom but still used. It refers to the lees (dregs, sediments) of wine or other liquids that settle in the bottom of the containing vessel if it is not disturbed. Hence, the idiom refers to someone or something that is at ease, not disturbed, or worried. Sometimes this also has reference to a false assurance. |
1283 | Food | Sharp cookie | Someone who isnt easily deceived or fooled is a sharp cookie. |
1284 | Food | She'll be apples | (AU) A very popular old Australian saying meaning everything will be all right, often used when there is some doubt. |
1285 | Food | Sing for your supper | If you have to sing for your supper, you have to work to get the pay or reward you need or want. |
1286 | Food | Slower than molasses going uphill in January | (USA) To move extremely slowly. Molasses drips slowly anyway but add January cold and gravity, dripping uphill would be an impossibility, thereby making the molasses move very slowly indeed! |
1287 | Food | Small potatoes | Someone or something that is unimportant is small potatoes. |
1288 | Food | Sour grapes | When someone says something critical or negative because they are jealous, it is a case of sour grapes. |
1289 | Food | Sow your wild oats | If a young man sows his wild oats, he has a period of his life when he does a lot of exciting things and has a lot of sexual relationships. for e.g. Hed spent his twenties sowing his wild oats but felt that it was time to settle down. |
1290 | Food | Spice of life | The spice of life is something that makes it feel worth living. |
1291 | Food | Spill the beans | If you spill the beans, you reveal a secret or confess to something. |
1292 | Food | Square meal | A square meal is a substantial or filling meal. |
1293 | Food | Squeeze blood out of a turnip | (USA) When people say that you cant squeeze blood out of a turnip, it means that you cannot get something from a person, especially money, that they dont have. |
1294 | Food | Stew in your own juices | If you leave someone to stew in their own juices, you leave them to worry about the consequences of what they have done wrong or badly. |
1295 | Food | Sure as eggs is eggs | These means absolutely certain, and we do say is even though it is grammatically wrong. |
1296 | Food | Sweet as a gumdrop | This means that something or someone is very nice or pretty. |
1297 | Food | Take the biscuit | (UK) If something takes the biscuit, it is the absolute limit. |
1298 | Food | Take the cake | If something takes the cake, it is the best and takes the honours. |
1299 | Food | Tall drink of water | Someone who is very tall and slender is a tall drink of water. (A tall glass of water is also used.) |
1300 | Food | Teach your grandmother to suck eggs | When people say dont teach your grandmother to suck eggs, they mean that people shouldnt try to teach someone who has experience or is an expert in that area. |
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