Want to add more spice to your writing ? Here are some more idiomatic expressions that will make your piece piquant and exciting.
| Idiom | Meaning | Sentence |
| Make a pig of oneself | to eat too much, too fast or too noisily | Please don’t embarrass me by making a pig of yourself in the party. |
| Leave someone high and dry | To leave someone helpless. | All the children ran away and left Billy high and dry to take the blame for the broken window. |
| Latch Onto | To become closely connected to someone or something,
Get hold or grasp of something |
More and more countries latched onto computer technology as an important tool for development.
Carol quickly latched on to how the sewing machine works |
| Rub the wrong way | To irritate | He rubbed many people in his office the wrong way by his cockiness. |
| Go hell for leather | To go somewhere or do something very quickly. | He was going hell for leather to go to his school as he was already late. |
| Have one’s moment in the sun | A brief instance in which an otherwise obscure, unremarkable, or humble person draws attention. | That band got their moment in the sun during the 70s |
| Bend over backwards | to work very hard to accomplish something for someone
to try very hard to do something, especially to help or please someone else |
He will bend over backwards to help you.
The government is bending over backwards to garner people’s support. |
| Drive up the wall | To annoy or irritate someone | All his talk about moving to California nearly drove me up the wall. |
| Bend someone’s ear | To talk to someone perhaps annoyingly | Jake has been bending Jill’s ears for over an hour. |
| Fend/shift for oneself | To take care and provide for one’s own self ,instead of depending on others. | Jim’s parents do not have to worry about Jim. He is very good at fending/shifting for oneself. |
| Duck and cover | To dodge a difficult issue or a question. | The candidate’s first reaction to the questions from the opposition was to duck and cover. |
| fight tooth and nail | To fight with the ferocity and intensity of an animal, using all one’s resources. | The NGO workers fought tooth and nail for the oppressed to get their land back from the crooked landlords. |
| tongue in cheek | if you say something as tongue and cheek, you say it as a joke, although it might seem serious. | “I am always the one who is responsible for anything bad that happens in Indian cricket”,Dhoni gave a tongue-in-cheek reply to a question at the post-match press conference after India suffered the ignominy of their first ever series defeat against Bangladesh. |
| hold one’s horse | To wait for a moment | Please hold your horses before disregarding my idea. Let me explain you the benefits. |
| make no bones about | To make no bones about something means to say something in a way that leaves no doubt, or to have no objection to it, to say something frankly and directly. | He made no bones about his constant failure at his job. |
| love you to the moon and back | love you more than anything. | I love you to the moon and back. |
| make ends meet | Manage so that one’s financial means are enough for one’s needs | On that salary Enid had trouble making ends meet. |
