A picture dictionary of English idioms (4/3)

In speaking a foreign language, we have all had the experience that we express ourselves in the simplest way possible. We tend to use direct, short, literal ways of speaking. We also tend to avoid what is colorful and imaginative. In short, what we leave out is idiomatic language. Since we have a tendency to leave out idioms, we cannot express our thoughts and feelings in their complexity and richness. Idioms are not just “ornaments” or “strange ways of speaking.” We need them to express ourselves as creative and imaginative human beings, and not like machines. This dictionary aims to help the reader become a more competent and creative human communicator in English. To learn idioms is not simply to learn a collection of phrases whose meaning is not predictable from the parts, like the “legendary” idiom kick the bucket for ‘to die.’ To learn idioms in a foreign language is to acquire a whole new way of speaking—one could say a new “mindset”—about a subject matter. So when we offer in this series of idiom dictionaries a number of idioms to talk about a variety of subject matters, we offer a new way of looking at these subject matters for a non-native speaker of English. The first volume of this series of idiom dictionaries contains idioms relating to the most common emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, pride, shame, surprise, and disgust). Volume two of A Picture Dictionary of English Idioms contains idioms that have to do with the closely related field of human relationships, including love, sex, marriage, and friendship. Volume three, the present one, focuses on the domain of actions and events and their various key aspects, such as state, change, cause, purpose, progress, difficulty, and means. Volume four will concentrate on idioms relating to thought and the mind. These are all conceptual areas that greatly abound in idioms in English and many other languages.