Art Central
Food Idioms
Have you ever been 'in a pickle', or heard someone call a boss the 'big cheese'? English is full of tasty sayings. Let's cook up a few more!
Did you know?
'Sour grapes' comes from Aesop's fable about a fox that cannot reach some grapes and decides they must be sour anyway. It means pretending you don't want something you can't have.
Being 'in a pickle' means being in trouble or a tricky spot. Shakespeare used it in his play 'The Tempest', written around 1610: 'How camest thou in this pickle?'
In old British slang, 'the cheese' meant 'the proper thing'. It came from the Urdu word 'chiz', meaning 'thing', which the British picked up in India more than 200 years ago!
Try this: Draw the Idiom
Pick three idioms: 'in a pickle', 'packed like sardines' and 'not my cup of tea'. Fold a page in half. On one side, draw what each idiom says word for word, like a person sitting inside a pickle jar! On the other side, draw what it really means. Ask your family to guess each one.
Go further: Food Idioms in Indian Languages
Indian languages love food sayings too! In Hindi, 'oont ke munh mein jeera', a cumin seed in a camel's mouth, means far too little of something. 'Daal mein kuch kaala hai', something black in the dal, means that something seems suspicious. Ask the elders at home for food idioms in your mother tongue and what they mean. Which one is your favourite?