Idioms & Figures
📋 What it is
An idiom is a phrase whose real meaning isn’t the literal words (“break a leg” means good luck).
🗣️ Coach says
Idioms are secret handshakes of a language. “It’s raining cats and dogs” doesn’t mean pets fall from the sky — it means heavy rain. You can’t figure them out word-by-word; you learn the hidden meaning.
🧠 Memory hook
An idiom means something OTHER than its literal words. Don’t translate it directly.
😲 Whoa!
Every language has its own idioms — in Swedish, “to slide in on a shrimp sandwich” means to have an easy life. They rarely translate word-for-word.
✅ Quick check: What does “that test was a piece of cake” actually mean?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
It means the test was very easy — nothing to do with cake; it’s an idiom, not literal.
An idiom’s meaning is fixed by usage, not by its individual words.
🪄 Trick question: Can you understand a new idiom by reading each word carefully?
Careful — think it through, then reveal.
Usually no — the meaning isn’t in the words; you have to learn or be told what the whole phrase means.
Idioms are non-literal, so word-by-word reading fails.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
List three idioms you know and write the LITERAL picture beside the REAL meaning. Notice the gap.