In English, you might describe something easy to do as a cinch or a piece of cake. Several other languages employ tasty metaphors to convey a similar idea. In Brazilian Portuguese, you something easy can be described with an idiom that translates as “a papaya with sugar.” A Dutch idiom literally translates as “a little egg,” and in Polish, you can say something’s easy with a phrase that translates as “a roll with butter.” Writer Adam Sharp has gathered these and other idioms in a book called The Wheel is Spinning But the Hamster is Dead: A Journey Around the World in Idioms, Proverbs and General Nonsense. (Amazon) This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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