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English Idioms that Don’t make sense… But we still Use them! 🤔

alina_shtroblia
Learning English can be pretty funny when you stumble upon idioms that make absolutely no sense. 😄 * “Kick the bucket” 🪣 – why are we kicking a bucket to mean someone passed away? * “Raining cats and dogs” 🐱🐶 – where did all these animals come from in the weather forecast? 🌧️ Anyone else find themselves confused by idioms like these? Let’s have some fun with the weirdest expressions you’ve encountered in English! 😂

30 comments

VileDie•
Non native speaker here. Kicking the bucket I know comes from suicide by hanging. People would step on a bucket, tie the rope to their neck and then kick the bucket so they would have nothing to step on. The cats and dogs thing, that I don't know.
CommonNative•
It's more southern than where I live, but I have family from the South: "The devil's beatin' his wife" for when it's sunny and rainy.
stxxyy•
I loved the "fine words butter no parsnips" idiom when I first heard it!
no_where_left_to_go•
So, since this is an English learning sub I will point out that all idioms don't make sense. That's actually a core component of the definition of an idiom. If it makes sense on its own then it's just an expression. An idiom has to be an expression that doesn't make sense using only the expression itself.
Ayo_Square_Root•
They make sense after you search up the origin... It's not like the came out of nowhere.
falseName12•
Supposedly, before proper rain management, if it rained too much the streets would flood enough to drown street cats and dogs. So it looked like it had rained cats and dogs. Can't vouch for that origin story though, just what I've heard.
Electric_Tongue•
By the skin of your teeth!
InFocuus•
Street cats and dogs can be very wet in hard rain. From raining ON cats and dogs perhaps?
Turfader•
I heard that “raining cats and dogs” comes from medieval times when pets would sleep in the sun on top of a house’s thatch roof. When it would rain hard and suddenly, the water would cause the pet to slide off. If you were looking through a window, it look like it had rained a cat or dog
Remarkable_Fun7662•
The first one I've heard in use a bunch of times, but it seems to me the only usages of "raining cats and dogs" I've heard is in the context of an example about quirky English idioms. I think you'd be better off ignoring it.
Impossible_Permit866•
One that confuses me is “to want to have your cake and eat it too” - i guess it means to sort of want it all, want things your way and want to reap all the benefits from that. Its a weird one to me because why would i have a cake and not eat it? Is having a cake and eating the cake so proposterous? What am i meant to do, just hold it?
bluestormAP•
Anything from the South! (US, I mean) They have some fun expressions. "Butter my butt and call me a biscuit!" "rode hard and put up wet" "more than you can shake a stick at" "That dog won't hunt."
comma-momma•
Head over heels. Isn't your head normally over your heels? Shouldn't it be heels over head?
Optimal-Ad-7074•
not being originally canadian, it took me a while to figure out 'loaded for bear.' now i love it.
Doh042•
Reading this thread just led me to discover that "It'll be a cold day in hell" also can be "as rare as hen's teeth". In French we still use the hen's teeth one. It's always fun for me to see how idioms aren't usually translated, but instead have a totally different metaphor. "I have fish to fry" >> "I have cats to whip." Wait, why fish? And what are you doing whipping cats?!
Irresponsable_Frog•
Butter your bread on both sides! When gramma said this I thought, why would you do that? You couldn’t eat the sandwich without your hands being covered! Don’t count your chickens before they hatch! And also… Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! As a child I thought, wouldn’t it be quicker to finish the chore? One in the hand is better than 2 on the bush!
DopazOnYouTubeDotCom•
Wait until you hear a middle-aged white guy from Kansas or somewhere bust out the “Oh darn, I sure screwed the pooch”
_felis_catus__•
I recommend reading a book called Word Myths by David Wilton 
Redbeard4006•
They are not confusing to me because I grew up with them. Many languages have idioms that don't make any sense if interpreted literally. Does your native language consist entirely of words that are interpreted 100% literally?
BLAZEISONFIRE006•
A British person on Reddit pointed out to me that "making out" as a slang for kissing makes no sense. Making out means to survive, to make it out alive, I guess. Victory or conquest, in other words. Victory or conquest with a chick is kissing, I guess. This all happened after I said "snogging" is a weird word...
conceptnothing0•
“Break the leg” is funny imo
Severe-Possible-•
idioms are phrases that don't sound like what they mean -- they are by definition weird. they usually have a cool origin if you're willing to do some research, but wait till you find out what kinds of words we have for different groups of animals.
MrLandlubber•
Beating the dead horse
Fizzabl•
"Bless their little cotton socks" - for when you feel bad for someone I mean just from the words, sounds like an old religious thing. Maybe for babies during the plague?  Though my favourite idiom I've never heard from a young person, my mum said this to me and I burst out laughing. "You look like an orphan caught in a storm" - You're wearing oversized clothes 
SpecialBottles•
They wouldn't be idioms if they made literal sense.
moms_on_reddit•
Don't put the cart before the horse!
zoopest•
Kick the bucket comes from standing on an overturned bucket to hang yourself and kicking the bucket away. Raining cats and dogs is an idiom type for heavy downpours found in many languages.
Murky_Web_4043•
I’m not here to fuck spiders.
ReasonableSignal3367•
I always go with it's pouring down outside or its raining cars and dogs. Its playful, light-hearted, fun. I love it.
Middcore•
You know, you could actually research the origin of these idioms instead of just deciding they're nonsense that came into being by magic and everyone just decided to keep saying them for no reason. The info is usually pretty easy to find on this thing called the internet.