In the 1996 movie Secrets & Lies, starring Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Blethyn’s East London character says of someone unfamiliar: I wouldn’t know him if he stood up in my soup! This is part of a complete episode.
Deanna from Whitefish, Montana, has a dispute with her husband over the definition of potpie. She says it’s a type of soup with dumplings; he says it can’t be called a pie if it doesn’t have a crust. There is such a thing as a pot...
The Italian phrase Non si frigge mica con l’acqua literally translates as “We don’t fry with water around here,” and means that the speaker doesn’t do things halfway. Quite a few other Italian idioms involve food. One...
Our conversation about Spanish idioms involving food prompted a tweet from Tijuana, Mexico: del plato a la boca, se cae la sopa, or between the dish and the mouth, the soup spills, or don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A similar idea is...
“Save your breath to cool your soup” is centuries old, including variants with porridge, pottage, broth, and other things. In all those cases, it’s a wry way to tell someone to be less long-winded. This is part of a complete...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is...