IDIOMS

Idioms are groups of words with special, specific meanings. They are often confusing because the
meaning of the whole group of words that form an idiom has little, often nothing, to do with the
meanings of the words taken one by one.

Idioms are phrase whose meaning cannot be gleaned from the literally meaning.

Idioms appear in every language, and English has thousands of them. In order to understand a
language, you must know what the idioms in that language mean. If you try to figure out the meaning of
an idiom literally, word by word, you will get befuddled. You have to know its “hidden” meaning.

For instance, to “let the cat out of the bag” means to reveal a secret. Today the phrase has nothing
to do with a cat or a bag, but hundreds of years ago, it actually did.