I love idioms in foreign languages. They make your words stand out from the rest of the language learning crowd. Students love to say “Il pleut des vaches” literally “it’s raining cows” which seems somehow much more appropriate for heavy rain than our use of cats and dogs.

An idiom, of course, is a phrase or sentence where the words mean something which can’t readily be deduced from the meaning of the individual words. It is raining but we don’t literally see pooches and moggies hurtling to the ground from the clouds.

Another favourite of French students is “faire du lèche-vitrines” which actually means to go window shopping but becomes more interesting when translated literally as “to do some window licking”

An idiom on its own is useful, however, it becomes even more colourful when the words are changed or it is developed in some way. It then takes on an even greater expressiveness.

The Arctic Monkeys do this to great effect. In the song I Wanna be Yours they use the straightforward idiom “You call the shots” but in Snap out of it they develop the phrase “It’s not over till the fat lady sings” and it becomes “if the fat lady fancies having a sing” This use and development of idioms adds colour and makes the resultant lyrics more poetic and more meaningful.

I recently decided to look at adapting some common idioms and tried turning them on their head. The result can often be a phrase with a much darker, deeper nuance that causes the reader to think because it takes them away from the use of the idiom that they understand and have probably used in their own everyday language. So why not flip “the calm before the storm” and say to a partner in a turbulent relationship, “You are the storm before my calm” The reader has to stop and think because it flies in the face (another idiom!) of the expected phrase.

Here are some others:

We all know about “putting the cat among the pigeons” Why not exaggerate it and put “the tiger among the humming birds.”

Somebody with chlamydia could suddenly be “the albatross around your loins” rather than your neck.

Don’t “call a spade a spade.”   Call “a spud a spud.”

We use the expression “dead as a dodo.”   Maybe someone who is constantly living in the past could be “alive as a dodo.”

For somebody prone to morbid self-analysis and with suicidal tendencies a particular thing might easily be “a fate worse than life.”

If “a leopard can’t change its spots” why can’t “a zebra not change its stripes?”

If everything always turns out badly and I am a total failure I might not “have an ace up my sleeve” It could well be “a double fault up my sleeve” or even  “another double fault up my sleeve.” This is taking an idiom relating to cards and translating it into a tennis idiom because of the different uses of the word “ace”

A certain type of music might not be “my cup of Earl Grey” or “my cup of Lapsong Souchong.”

And finally a very dark and sinister twist on an old idiom: “It’s just what Shipman ordered.”

For me language is never static, never boring, and should never be predictable. We can write our own rules and create our own images.

I can be fairly confident that most of the new idioms I have created above have never been used before in the history of the English language. Now that’s exciting! I know we should not reinvent the wheel but let’s reinvent the idiom! Happy playing!

©Cre8ivation