Reader Opinions
Anonymous – (out of the blue) January 21, 2021
Idioms leave a lasting impression and on top of that, they are really catchy.
Riaz Ahmed – (better half) January 20, 2021
It is a phrase for respect to the spouse by accepting him or her as a better half of a complete relationship. In other words one accepts his/her spouse better than oneself.
Marcus – (cross the bridge) January 20, 2021
We had a HPC* who confused this idiom with the idiom of “burning one’s bridges”, thereby uttering: “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” Inspirational!
*(high-priced consultant)
Josephine – (broken heart) January 16, 2021
Could you also provide from which cultural literature origin this phase came from? Or show me where I could get it? Thanks for the given info.
Fran – (pull the wool over eyes) January 15, 2021
It is actually older. If you look up the wool history in England and specifically the Cotswolds, there was a rule that said people must be buried in all wool or suffer a fine.
Thank you, Fran
Anonymous – (drop a line) January 14, 2021
“I’m just dropping a line.” -I’m thinking about you so writing a small message. Is it how to use this way?
Catalina – (call of the wild) January 13, 2021
The call of the wild is a magic being that gives one that hears it super powers.
Ken – (good grief) January 11, 2021
We are all bound to suffer grief in this broken world. We attempt to deal with it by making our lives a quest for happiness. It never fully satisfies. It’s like a mechanic test-driving a car he’s repaired. Hearing the transmission problem persist he switches the car radio onto his favourite station and turns the volume up high. That’s no fix at all! By entering fully into the grievous sufferings of Easter, Jesus bore our sins. He suffered and died out of love for his people. His was a good grief. He fixed the cause of our brokeness from the inside by paying the penalty for our sins. Although safe in Christ, his people presently still suffer griefs, but God uses them train us and to teach us how to serve as Jesus did. It is good when grief’s power to ruin us is past, instead it trains us to be like the Lord, to please God and help others. Jesus was raised to life on Easter Sunday. For his people heaven awaits. All because of his good grief. Good eh?
Tommy W Box – (the devil is beating his wife) January 11, 2021
As a young child from Texas I remember my mother saying this. I am 54 now.
David – (smell a rat) January 10, 2021
Smelt a rat OR Smelled a rat?
Smell has both an irregular and regular form. You can use both and both are correct. Brits use smelled and smelt interchangeably, but speakers in North America rarely use smelt.
But which is the most used one? Let´s look at Google Ngram Viewer tool which displays a graph showing how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the years.
Let´s look at the current online media:
New project to find out what Europe smelt like from 16-20th century – [BBC]
Yaoumbaev told CNN he smelt something extremely unpleasant –[CNN]
