S: We were jammed in the bus with not enough room to swing a cat. BTW, don’t swing a cat even if the place is spacious. If there isn’t enough room to swing a cat, the place must be pretty cramped. S: The increase in customs duty by the government has upset the applecart of those car companies who were importing most of their car parts. If you upset someone’s applecart, you do something that spoils their plan. The apples roll on the road, and some of them are run over. ![]() Maybe I’ll use the money to…” Right then few ravenous monkeys pounce and upset the applecart. Upset someone’s applecartĪ farmer is merrily hauling up his produce of shiny, juicy apples in his cart. S: Tom: I’ll wake up at 5 AM and go for a jog. Flying of pigs, thus, can be associated with something that’s not going to happen. I think he has bitten more than he can chew, and he’ll struggle to handle them all. S: He has taken more responsibilities as he couldn’t say ‘no’ to his boss. It’s difficult to chew food if you bite more than a mouthful, isn’t it? Same holds for taking on a task that is too difficult for you. S: In the initial months of Covid-19, scientists were sometimes barking up the wrong tree in their recommendation on preventive steps. If someone is barking up the wrong tree, they’re following a wrong course of action. The dog is now barking up the wrong tree. The dog, standing underneath the leafy branches, keeps on barking while the monkey quietly slips to the adjoining tree. Hunting dog chases a monkey, but the monkey escapes into a tree. S: With banks baying for his blood over default in payments, he has his back against the wall.Įxplore eBook & Course 4. In modern times though, you don’t need to be in military to have your back against the wall. Back against the wallīack in the days, when a military unit was in a difficult situation in war, it was said to have its back against the wall. S: I’ll return damage to my car by damage to his car. You, of course, don’t live in Hammurabi’s Mesopotamia, but if you smash someone’s windshield because they’ve smashed yours, you’ve just taken an eye for eye. If found guilty of this offence, convict’s eyes used to be damaged in a tit-for-tat punishment. In ancient Mesopotamia, one of the offences in king Hammurabi’s penal code was damaging someone’s eye. S: It’s not that the management is not aware of few false bills here and there, but they don’t call it because it would expose many and stir up a hornet’s nest. Given this, who would want to poke a stick in hornet’s nest and stir it? That would be unnecessary pain and trouble. ![]() Hornets are the largest eusocial wasps, and their sting can be really painful. Without further ado, here are 200+ popular idioms, each followed by its meaning and an example sentence (marked ‘ S’). In other words, idiom is figurative language. An idiom is a phrase or expression whose meaning can’t be deduced directly from individual words in that phrase or expression.
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