Hello! We are six students of English Studies from University of Seville, and this is a project of New Technologies Applied to English Language.

BITE ONE'S TONGUE

MEANING

To forcibly prevent oneselffrom speaking, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute. The equivalent in Spanish would be “morderse la lengua”.

ORIGIN

Biting one’s tongue is seen as an act of containment, due to the fact that the bitten is painful and doesn’t allow the speaker to talk fluently.

EXAMPLES

• I wanted to tell him what I exactly thought of him, but I had to bite my tongue.
• When my son told me he wanted to become an artist, I had to bite my tongue and accept his decision.

LET ONE'S HAIR DOWN

MEANING

To allow yourself to behave much more freely than usual and enjoy yourself. The equivalent in Spanish would be “soltarse la melena”.

ORIGIN

Letting one's hair down was a commonplace part of women's daily activities in the 17th century. The hair was normally pinned up and was let down for brushing or washing. The term used for this at the time was dishevelling. Anyone who is unkempt and generally untidy might now be described as dishevelled but then it applied specifically to hair which was unpinned.

The first reference I could find was John Cotgrave’sThe English treasury of wit and language, 1655:

"Descheveler, to discheuell; to pull the haire about the eares"

EXAMPLES

• It's nice to let your hair down once in a while and feel free to do what you want.
• I was so fed up with staying at home and studying at weekends, that I decided to let my hair down and went partying with friends.

BREAK SOMEONE'S HEART

MEANING

A broken heart (also called heartbreak) is a metaphor meaning intense and overwhelming grief especially through disappointment in love. The equivalent in Spanish would be “romperle el corazón a alguien”.

ORIGIN

This idiom comes from the traditional idea that feelings and emotions are located in the heart, so whenever we have a strong grief or disappointment it is symbolized with the breaking of this organ.

The issues of pain surrounding a broken heart have been used for a long time,  as we can see for instance in the Bible:

• Psalm 69:20. Insult have broken my heart and left me weak. I looked for sympathy but there was none.
• Psalm 34:18. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

EXAMPLES

• He broke my heart when he told me he didn't love me anymore.
• What a sad story-It's so heartbreaking!

Perhaps you have ever wondered which the point of learning idioms is: there are lots of them and they don't often appear on English books at school.

Idioms are really important because they are present on natives' lives (conversations, films, songs...). Here you have a song as an example of one of the idiom we have just seen: Don't Go Breaking My Heart, by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Hope you enjoy it!