IDIOMS for ESL Students: At the bottom of the totem pole

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

At the bottom of the totem pole

A person who is said to be at the bottom of the totem pole is someone unimportant or who occupies a lowly position in an organization. (A totem pole is a post carved and painted with a series of family or clan crests or with figures representing mythic beings and erected usually before a dwelling, as among certain Native American peoples of the northwest coast of North America.)

“He’s been with the company for many years yet he’s still at the bottom of the totem pole.”

1 comment:

AnonymousAugust 24, 2025 at 2:29 PM
"Bottom of the totem pole" is an offensive, maladaptative misstating of the purported significance of placements on a totem pole by colonizers and those educated by them. It's not a term for civil society, nor to be used by other than those who are openly and proudly brutish louts.
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Foreword

An idiom (id-ee-uhm) is an expression composed of a word or a combination of words which, when taken together as a single unit, has a meaning that is different from the standard definition of the individual words. It has a fixed grammatical structure and a specialized or figurative meaning that develop from common usage by a particular people in a particular region, culture or era. Although idioms take root and flourish in a local setting, many of them acquire universal use and gain international acceptance.

When taken literally, idioms convey an idea that is very different from their specialized meaning. For example, the expression a tough cookie conjures an image that it totally different from its figurative meaning, which is a strong and self-confident person who doesn’t yield easily to pressure. Some idioms, when taken literally, are reduced to a heap of words that don’t seem to make sense. Examples of this are the expressions all ears, a square peg in a round hole, train of thought, and many more. For this reason, idioms cannot be directly translated to although they may have figurative equivalent in other languages.

Native speakers take them for granted and use them in their spoken and written communication at home, in the workplace, or in the community, but students learning English as a second or foreign language find idioms difficult to comprehend. This is understandable because an ESL or EFL student analyzing an idiom for the first time would try to deduce its meaning from the literal definition of its parts. Expectedly, this method will give him the literal translation but not its figurative meaning. If he stops with the literal translation the process will result only in confusion. But with proper tutorial he should discover its figurative meaning and, with constant use, successfully complete the assimilation process.

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