--- title: Idioms taken literally — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Idioms taken literally», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An idiom is a group of words whose meaning is not the meaning of its separate words; you have to learn it as one whole piece, like a key that open --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Idioms taken literally # Idioms taken literally Lesson 25 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/0/) — An idiom is a group of words whose meaning is not the meaning of its separate words; you have to learn it as one whole piece, like a key that opens one door. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/1/) — Grandad looks out and says "It's raining cats and dogs!", and little Kai runs to the window to look for falling pets; Grandad only meant it is raining very hard. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/2/) — Every language has idioms, and they sound mad when translated word for word: a Ukrainian gran says "вішати локшину на вуха", "to hang noodles on someone's ears", which means to tell them nonsense. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/3/) — People love telling stories about where idioms came from, but many of those stories are guesses; when nobody is sure, a good speaker says "maybe". - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/5/) — "Raining cats and dogs" means raining very hard; nobody knows for sure where it came from, and the stories about animals falling from roofs are not proven. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/6/) — In theatre "Break a leg!" means "Good luck!"; actors thought saying "good luck" was unlucky, and the exact origin is not known. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/7/) — "Beat about the bush" means avoid saying something directly; it comes from hunters beating bushes to scare birds out. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/8/) — "Cost an arm and a leg" means cost a lot of money; it is a deliberate exaggeration, called hyperbole. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/9/) — "Bite the bullet" means face something unpleasant bravely; the story about soldiers biting bullets is often told but not proven. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/10/) — "Hit the nail on the head" means be exactly right; it comes from carpentry, where a nail hit exactly goes straight in. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/11/) — In British football talk, "sick as a parrot" means very disappointed and "over the moon" means very happy. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/12/) — The Ukrainian idiom "вішати локшину на вуха" (hang noodles on ears) means to tell someone lies or nonsense; to translate an idiom, find the matching idiom, not the matching words. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/13/) — "Pull someone's leg" means tease or trick them for fun. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/14/) — "Let the cat out of the bag" means reveal a secret; the story about a cat swapped for a pig at a market has no clear proof. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/15/) — In Scots, "Away and bile yer heid!" (go and boil your head) means "go away" or "don't talk nonsense"; it is cheeky, not a real threat. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/16/) — "I'm all ears" means "I'm listening carefully"; other body-part idioms are "keep an eye on", "give someone a hand" and "a heart of gold". - ← previous: [Borrowed words from far away: Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian and more](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/) - next →: [Phrasal verbs: get up, give up, make up](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/26-phrasal-verbs-get-up-give-up-make-up/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)