 Idioms are phrases which cannot be understood simply by looking at the meaning of the individual words in the phrase. We use idiomatic expressions all the time. If your friend is beating around the bush, they are avoiding speaking with you about something directly. That's the way the ball bounces suggests that some things are just out of our control. When someone says it's raining cats and dogs, they mean it's raining heavily. Cats and dogs are not actually falling from the sky. It may have originated during the 17th century in England when cats and dogs were known to live in thatched roofs. During heavy rains, they may have slipped and fallen into the streets. The mystery novelist Agatha Christie loved to use idioms. Christie's beloved detective, Hercules Poirot, is often found to be in a brown study or fully absorbed in his own thoughts. In the short story, jewelry robbery at the Grand Metropolitan, Poirot and his reliable assistant Hastings encounter a woman with some missing pearls. Hastings recounts Poirot's behavior. He was staring thoughtfully out of the window and seemed to have fallen into a brown study. In Christie's book, and then there were none, a judge named Justice Wargrove reflects on an old case of his when he sentenced a man named Edward Seaton to death. He's going to bed as he does this. Carefully, Mr. Justice Wargrove removed his false teeth and dropped them into a glass of water. The shrunken lips fell in. It was a cruel mouth now, cruel and predatory. Hooding his eyes, the judge smiled to himself. He'd cooked Seaton's goose all right. Cooked the goose is an idiom that means to ruin. Thanks to Justice Wargrove, Seaton was in big trouble. Did you catch the other bits of interesting language in that section? The phrase hooding his eyes is metaphorical, so is shrunken lips. To learn more about metaphors, you can watch my colleague Tim Jensen's video. If you really want to get into it, some idioms are also metaphors. The word idiom comes from the Greek word idios, which means for one's own or private. That's apt, because idioms are kind of like private jokes between the people who know them. Since idioms are also culturally specific, they aren't solely connected to language. In the UK, when someone says they are chuffed to bits, they mean that they are very pleased. If you speak American English, you may not be familiar with that idiom. The linguist Anatoly Lieberman, who has studied and written about the origin of idioms extensively, found that some idioms are highly localized, never used outside of a small community. Idioms come and go, and many have died out. He says that although idioms are phrases, we learn them the way we learn words. It is the entire phrase that has a meaning. Often, the order of the words in the phrase cannot be changed around. You could say that idioms are a kind of literary and cultural shorthand. When you wrap your head around that, means did that make sense to you? Because idioms cannot be literally translated, their meanings cannot be predicted. Foreign language speakers have a particularly hard time wrapping their heads around idioms. The TED program asks some of its translators for idioms that might confound English speakers. In Latvian, to blow little ducks means to talk nonsense or to lie. In French, the carrots are cooked, means the situation can't be changed. It's similar to the English idiom, there's no use crying over spilt milk. Without an explanation, these would all be Greek to me. Hey, that's another idiom, it's all Greek to me. That one can be found in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, though it was likely in use before that. If you have a favorite idiom in any language, I'd love to hear it. You can share it in the comments below. Well, I think that's a wrap.