For English language learners, mastering idioms is vital for academic and professional success. Proficiency exams like IELTS and TOEFL assess idiom comprehension, recognising it as a sign of advanced ...

The cat's out of the bag—idioms can be tricky, even for native English speakers. If you’re going to live in the United States or converse with English speakers, you’ll need to master our most commonly ...

From William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, figurative language such as idiom, metaphor, symbolism and allegory all function to make a poem sound more colourful and appealing to the reader. But are we ...

Why do we say "I'm not pulling your leg"? Or "he kicked the bucket"? I don't mean etymologically, I mean logically. Why do we use idioms? I became fascinated by that question when I discovered that ...

The English language, chock-full of thousands of words and quirky borrowed phrases, can be mind-boggling. Take idioms, for instance. These common figurative or literary phrases don’t make much sense ...

In Begat, David Crystal sets out to prove that the King James Bible has contributed more to the English language than any other literary source. If you've ever "fought the good fight" or chuckled at ...

In any language there are certain conventions of expression--ways of writing and saying things--that are not necessarily dictated by grammatical rules. But when these conventions are not followed, the ...

A post shared on X correctly listed idioms indicating heavy rain in English, Welsh, French, Finnish, Norwegian, Greek and Slovak. Idioms are a fascinating aspect of language, reflecting cultural ...

Language processing encompasses the mental mechanisms by which individuals decode, interpret and produce language, while idiom comprehension focuses on understanding fixed, culturally embedded ...

Students aiming to master the English language recognise that vocabulary memorisation and grammar alone aren’t enough to ensure success in their studies. The journey toward fluent, natural ...