IDIOMS for ESL Students: January 2017

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Fair-weather friend

He is a person who is a friend only in good times.

“After I lost my job my fair-weather friend stopped answering my calls.”

Face the music

To face the music is to accept the unpleasant results of one’s actions.

“You knew there was a scheduled exam but you watched a movie instead. Now go to the principal’s office and face the music.”

Monday, January 23, 2017

Every Tom, Dick and Harry

Every Tom, Dick and Harry refers to an average person, to anyone and everyone.

“Not every Tom, Dick and Harry can run for mayor.”

End of one's rope

To be at the end of one’s rope is to run out of ideas about something.

“I am at the end of my rope on how to deal with delinquent students.”

Elephant in the room

An elephant in the room is an obvious truth that is being ignored or an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss.

“I understand it's difficult to talk about our situation but I think it's time to face the elephant in the room.”

Egghead

This is an informal term used to refer to an extremely intelligent person.

“It’s difficult to excel in this class. It has the most number of eggheads in the university.”

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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