5.31.2007

idioms "get my goat".



Apparently there is more than 12,000 idioms in the English language. From http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com:

The idiom dictionary is compiled from the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms and the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms.

The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms explains over 7,000 idioms current in British, American and Australian English, helping learners to understand them and use them with confidence. The Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, based on the 200 million words of American English text in the Cambridge International Corpus, unlocks the meaning of more than 5,000 idiomatic phrases used in contemporary American English. Full-sentence examples show how idioms are really used.

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A professor of mine once mentioned that it was hard for ESL learners to get our American idioms, and I don't blame them. How does "get your goat" translate to being annoyed? How does "getting up on the wrong side of the bed" translate to being cranky?

An idiom that always annoyed me was "add insult to injury." The idiom dictionary defined it as follows:

to make a bad situation even worse for someone by doing something else to upset them.

I wondered if John Mayer had anything to say about idioms in his blog and he did...particularly about the one I just mentioned (I had to dig back to 2006, but it was there):

Here's the only way you should be allowed to incorporate the phrase "to add insult to injury" into a conversation:

"Gary socked me in the nuts with a glove full of coins. And then, to add insult to injury, he called me an asshole."

Yes, there are other ways to incorporate this. But this one actually made sense. (It also made me laugh.)

Apparently there is an album out also titled "Add Insult to Injury". See here.

The things you can find out....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think this is the first blog I have ever read about idioms. I would love to see more. Your example was classic!!