IDIOMS for ESL Students: February 2017

Monday, February 13, 2017

Fat hits fire

When the fat hits the fire, a situation becomes frantic and unpleasant.

“The students only wanted to peacefully express their opposition to the tuition increase, but when the policemen arrived, fat hit the fire and pandemonium broke up.”

Fan the flames

To fan the flames is to cause anger or other negative feelings or sentiments to rise.

“The story about the illegally dismissed employee fanned the flames of labor unrest.”

Fall off the wagon

To fall off the wagon is to return to the use alcohol or drugs after stopping for a while.

“He has just been released from the rehabilitation center and he has fallen off the wagon again.”

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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