You Must Figure It Out for Yourself

“He learned about the birds and the bees at an early age.”—the underlined phrase in the given sentence is called an idiom. An idiom is an expression with a meaning that cannot be guessed or derived from the individual words that form it. We often use idioms in our daily conversations and written communications to make them more attractive. “Your eyes are like stars.” “The ants talked to each other when they met.” “Her voice is music to my ears.” Have you ever encountered sentences like these before? These sentences mean something other than their literal meanings. They are examples of idioms. They are expressions of ideas, feelings, and wants in forms more pleasant to one’s ears and eyes. What about sentences like “A stitch in time saves nine”? Phrases and sentences like this one are called proverbs. These well-known, neatly expressed sayings give advice or tell a supposed truth. Both idioms and proverbs are considered figurative, meaning “not literal.” This module will familiarize you with the types of figurative language commonly used in our daily lives.