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

MAKE A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL

MEANING

It means to exagerate the severity of a situation; to make a lot of fuss about nothing.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You didn't mean to hurt her.

ORIGIN

The idea for this phrase is this: You are taking something small, such as a molehill, and you are making it out to be bigger than it truly is. This expression is typically applied to problems people have. Often times, people will argue or cause trouble over the most insignificant things. Hence, someone who escalates a small problem into a larger one is said to be overreacting, or as the phrase puts it, they are 'making a mountain out of a molehill.' This saying is found in writing as early as the year 1660. It's written by James Howell in a lexicon book containing proverbs from many different languages. Worthy of note is that the concept for this idiom has existed for an even longer time, the only difference being the sort of imagery that's used. Instead of mountains and molehills, this older idiom is about "making an elephant out of a fly." This older phrase is said to go back as far as the year 1548, so it's possible that 'making a mountain out of a molehill' derives from this earlier expression.

EXAMPLE

Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. It's not that important.

BEAT AROUND THE BUSH

MEANING

To treat a topic, without mentioning its main points, often intentionally, because the topic is difficult or unpleasant.

ORIGIN

The figurative meaning of the phrase 'beat around the bush' or, as it is usually expressed in the UK, 'beat about the bush', evolved from the earlier literal meaning. In bird hunts some of the participants roused the birds by beating the bushes and enabling others, to use a much later phrase, to 'cut to the chase' and catch the quarry in nets. So 'beating about the bush' was the preamble to the main event, which was the capturing of the birds. “Beat around the bush” as far as the relative global popularity of the two versions of the phrase goes, the US version is becoming the standard.

EXAMPLE

Stop beating around the bush and tell me what happens!

DROP IN THE BUCKET

MEANING

Something so strong that it doesn't count or doesn't have any importance or significance. A very small proportion of the whole.

ORIGIN

From the Bible, Isaiah 40:15 : "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing”. 'A drop in the bucket' is the predecessor of 'a drop in the ocean', which means the same thing, and is first found in a piece from The Edinburgh Weekly Journal, July 1802: "The votes for the appointment of Bonaparte to be Chief Consul for life are like a drop in the ocean compared with the aggregate of the population of France."

EXAMPLE

Our school is sending a thousand tons of food to the poor countries, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed.