Task 4: Find the meaning of the following idioms and frame a sentence from each.
1. When pigs fly
2. Fine tooth comb. 3. Backroom boys
4. Black sheep
5. Hear it on grapevine:
6. Golden handshake
7. Taste of your own medicine
8. Cost an arm and a leg
9. A chip on you shoulder
10. Open Pandora’s Box
Answers
Answer:
1. The phrase "when pigs fly" is an adynaton—a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility.
2. a comb with narrow teeth that are close together.
3. slang chiefly British. : a person engaged in scientific especially secret research also : an expert adviser or aide : brain truster.
4. a member of a family or group who is regarded as a disgrace to it.
5. To hear something through the grapevine or on the grapevine is to learn about something via an informal source or hearsay
6. a payment given to someone who is made redundant or retires early.
7. The phrase 'a taste of your own medicine' means someone should have the same unpleasant experience that they themselves have given to someone
8. be extremely expensive.
9. an ingrained feeling of resentment deriving from a sense of inferiority and sometimes marked by aggressive behaviour.
10. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world.
Explanation: