English proverbs and sayings

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Photo: Lutz. **Meaning:** You should not arouse suspicion. Addressing circumstances, incidents or agencies whose naming might attract the unwanted attention of third parties. **Origin:** After the vicious watchdog you’d rather not wake up when he’s sleeping.

To have a bone to pick with someone.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org. **Meaning:** To have to settle an argument with someone; to have to give someone a piece of one’s mind

Losing track.

Photo: boschwegsetoneelgroep.nl. **Meaning:** not knowing how to proceed. **Origin:** Hunter’s expression.

You must say what is on your mind.

He does it with a bleeding heart.

Image: Ivana Tomášková – AI. **Meaning:** doing it with sadness or reluctance.

The sands are running out.

Painting by Salvador Dali. **Meaning:** time flies by

Not have a red cent.

Photo: wikiimages. **Meaning:** To be of very low value.

Sitting on his lazy ass.

Photo: kneelinofficechairs.com. **Meaning:** doing nothing, idling.

In half a shake.

Photo: pixabay. **Meaning:** In no time. **Origin:** Alluding to the hand movements of magicians.

Throw in the towel.

Photo: pokernews. **Meaning:** to give up. **Origin:** Borrowed from boxing. When the boxing trainer throws in a towel, it is considered giving up and admitting defeat.

Have clean hands.

Photo: Manuel Dario Fuentes Hernández. **Meaning:** to declare oneself innocent (regardless of whether it is true or not). **Origin:** From the Bible (Matt 27:24), where Pilate had Jesus crucified against his inner conviction, and in a Psalm of David (Ps 26:6).

One hand washes the other.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

To catch someone on the wrong foot.

Photo: patch.com. **Meaning:** to mislead, deceive someone.

To have a frog in the troath.

Image: robscholtenmuseum. **Meaning:** having difficulty speaking. **Origin:** This seemingly nonsensical phrase comes from the medical term ranula, a growth in the human throat that resembles a frog when it swells.

The penny has dropped.

Photo: Maria Kray. **Meaning:** Someone finally understood after serious difficulties and long explanations. **Origin:** In vending machines, the coin has to fall into the slot before they start working. Sometimes that process needs some not-so-soft persuasion.

To hear the grass grow.

Photo: Heri Santoso. **Meaning:** It is so still or quiet that one would be able to hear even the tiniest, imperceptible sounds.

To bite the dust.

Photo: pixabay. **Meaning:** To perish, to die **Origin:** from the language of soldiers. Heavily wounded soldiers literally bit the grass in pain.

To have your head in the clouds.

Photo: Adam Pizurny. **Meaning:** Daydreaming

Don’t make a fuss!

Photo: Mariusz Prusaczyk. **Meaning:** Don’t make a trammel

Let bygones by bygones.

Photo by awkwarddness.blogspot.com. **Meaning:** To forgive someone for something done or for a disagreement and to forget about it.

Almsgiving never made any man poor.

Photo: aforisticamente.com. **Meaning:** You don’t become poor if you give alms. **Origin:** Proverbs 28:27 ‘He who gives to the poor will not lack anything’.

Follow in someone’s footsteps.

Photo: modi74. **Meaning:** following the path of the predecessor.

To get cold feet.

Photo: broavloerisolatie. **Meaning:** Waiting for a long time, hesitating, getting scared, giving up on a plan. **Origin:** If you wait long or in vain, you often get cold feet.

To put a flea in someone’s ear.

Image: Peter van Geest – AI. **Meaning:** Making someone experience prolonged turmoil with a message or an idea.

To kill two birds with one stone.

Image: evilenenglish. Meaning: achieve two things at once with one action.

Meaning: half-hearted, belongs nowhere. Origin: The idiom originated during the Reformation, when people wanted to denounce fickle people who were unsure whether they wanted to remain Catholic or become Protestants.

Photo: marketresponse. **Meaning:** half-hearted, belongs nowhere. **Origin:** The idiom originated during the Reformation, when people wanted to denounce fickle people who were unsure whether they wanted to remain Catholic or become Protestants.

Get one’s fingers burnt.

Image: Peter van Geest – AI. **Meaning:** to suffer harm, to have a painful experience. **Origin:** From the fable ‘The Monkey and the Cat’ by Jean de la Fontaine. A cat and a monkey, a pair of crooks, see chestnuts being roasted in the coals. The cat takes the hot chestnuts out of the fire and burns its paws, while the monkey eats the chestnuts alone, without burning himself or sharing them with the cat, as previously agreed. The story shows how a situation is exploited at the expense of others. The idiom entered the German language during the period of French occupation when a number of expressions and loanwords from the French language were adopted into German.

Be steady as a rock.

Photo: proartspb. **Meaning:** Someone who is not thrown off course by anything, steadfast and reliable.

Just hanging out….

Be like a bull in a china shop.

Photo: loc.gov. **Meaning:** having no regard for sensitivities. Being boorish and untactful.

Burying one’s head in the sand.

Photo: evangelinar. **Meaning:** Not wanting to see the truth or danger.

To do some frank talking.

Tell someone the unvarnished truth.

Thwarting someones plans.

Photo by Hans. **Meaning:** Obstructing someone.

To swear stone and bone.

Photo by securitymanagement. **Origin:** The expression is often traced back to medieval oath rituals on altar stones and relics (“leg” in the sense of bone), but it is more likely that it simply refers to the particular hardness of the items mentioned.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Off-the-cuff

Photo by skiddle. **Meaning:** Not prepared in advance; impromptu.

After a storm comes a calm.

Photo by s-usans-blog. **Meaning:** Things often improve after a difficult, chaotic, or stressful time.

The venom is in the tail.

To look for a needle in a haystack.

Photo by Dominika Roseclay. **Meaning:** Trying to do something impossible.

The wolf may lose his teeth but never his nature.

Photo by Wikikimages. **Meaning** ; You can never trust a bad person.

Speech is silver, silence is golden.

Photo by Jerzy Górecki . **Remark:** Originating in Arabic culture, it occurs in several languages.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A bird cannot fly with one wing.

He that stays in the valley, shall never get over the hill.

To want to reinvent the wheel.

Photo by nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiel. **Meaning**: to waste time trying to create something that someone else has already created

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay. A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon. A swarm of bees in July is not worth a fly.

Make a mountain out of a molehill.

Photo by enge.com. **Meaning:** To exaggerate an insignificant thing immensely.

His heart sank into his boots.

Photo by lookatme.ru. **Meaning:** Someone became afraid of his own courage and abandoned his project

Was in the merry month of May when flowers were a bloomin’, sweet William on his death bed lay for the love of Barbara Allen.

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.

Pull somebody’s leg.

Photo by teclasap.com.br. **Meaning:** to try to persuade someone to believe something that is not true

Put somebody on.

Compare apples and oranges.

Photo by istockphoto.com. Meaning: Comparing two completely different things.

To be at one’s wit’s end.

Photo by albawaba.com. Meaning: Not knowing anymore, not being able to go on.

April weather, rain and sunshine both together.

To give one’s two cents worth.

Foto door pknbierumholwierdekrewerd.nl. Meaning: Oftentimes used for someone who makes irrelevant and unqualified comments to everything.

You’re pulling my leg.

Photo by Dawin Rizzo. **Meaning:** You are joking

In the middle of nowhere.

As through the poplar’s gusty spire, the March wind sweeps and sings, I sit beside the hollow fire, and dream familiar things; Old memories wake, faint echoes make a murmur of dead springs.