#idiom — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #idiom, aggregated by home.social.
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So silly!
I mean, the idiom didn't even exist until the 19th century. (Maybe.)
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Sometimes the English language irritates the bejeesus out of me. But other times I have so much fun with its rich collection of colourful idioms (like '... the bejeesus out of ...')!
I just told someone I have too many irons in the fire (busy with too many things). I'm constantly telling people that I don't like to 'blow my own trumpet' (praise my own work), or as a more historically recent example, that an extreme approach to a situation is 'the nuclear option'.
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It's my understanding that there's a secretly powerful Russian swear word (or phrase) that translates roughly into "Hello, F-word" but is used as specific recognition of events that are only possible in a dark and arbitrary universe.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
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#idiom : an expression conforming or appropriate to the peculiar structural form of a language
- German: die Redewendung
- Italian: espressione idiomatica
- Portuguese: idioma
- Spanish: modismo
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Try Christian's word chain building game @ https://wordwallgame.com
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The #idiom “to kill two #birds with one stone” means accomplishing two things with a single action or with a lesser effort than normally we need. This expression exists in other languages with a rich variety of different #animals: #rabbits and #hares, #flies, #pigeons, and #sparrows. They are either hunted or killed. In some languages, however, there is no explicit reference to any animal (green color).
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You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague – Smithsonian Magazine
You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague
Officials are managing an influx of tourists coming to see “Idiom,” a seemingly infinite tunnel of books by the artist Matej Krén, at the Municipal Library
By Christian Thorsberg, Correspondent January 16, 2026
Inside Idiom, which uses mirrors to provide the illusion of infinite length Omar Marques / Anadolu Agency / Getty ImagesNearly 30 years after a dizzying sculpture fashioned from books was first installed at the Prague Municipal Library in the Czech Republic, literature lovers on TikTok and Instagram have turned the artwork into a viral fascination and unexpected tourism hotspot.
Idiom, created by Slovak artist Matej Krén, features roughly 8,000 books stacked into a tower. Mirrors placed on the top and bottom give the illusion of infinite length, and a raindrop-shaped entryway invites visitors to peek inside the wormhole—almost like they’re literally disappearing into a good book.
“The Idiom is meant to symbolize the infinity of knowledge,” according to a description of the sculpture on the library’s website. “[Books] are like bricks to [Krén], but they contain much more information, destinies, stories and knowledge. He puts them into the form of dwellings: primitive on the one hand, infinitely intelligent on the other.”
During peak travel seasons, the library estimates that 1,000 people per day are visiting the installation. Omar Marques / Anadolu Agency / Getty ImagesThe installation made its debut at the Sao Paulo International Biennial in 1995, and in 1996 it was brought to Prague. It was first exhibited for a summer at the Jiri Svestka Gallery, which in the 1950s was a communist warehouse of banned books, before moving to its permanent home at the library in 1998.
For years, Idiom stood as little more than a familiar fixture, with its fame generally limited to the regular library-goers in the Czech capital. But beginning in 2022, the sculpture gained renown by going viral on BookTok, the pocket of TikTok dedicated to discussions of books and writing. Algorithms on Instagram similarly pushed the sculpture to the forefront of feeds.
“Kids that were in Prague looking into their phones suddenly saw a cool thing that they liked and they wanted to see it as well,” Czech journalist Janek Rubeš told Radio Prague International in 2023. “And as it is in today’s world, everyone wants to have the same picture or same video, because it looks cool and they can get likes.”
Quick fact: Idiom on the cover of Science
A photo of the sculpture was featured on the magazine’s cover in January 2011.In that issue, researchers analyzed a massive collection of 5.2million books to study cultural trends.
Today, librarians and local tourism officials are bewildered at the foot traffic the sculpture generates. During peak travel seasons—such as Christmas and Easter—more than 1,000 people each day endure wait times of more than two hours to snap a photograph.
“We’ll have to deal with it in some way, because working with tourist crowds is a completely different service from that we have provided up to now,” Lenka Hanzlikova, a spokesperson for the library, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Most readers laugh about it and say it’s bizarre, but we have had people who wanted to return books and joined the queue.”
Continue/Read Original Article Here: You Can See a Swirling Sculpture Made of 8,000 Books at a Library in Prague
Tags: 8000 Books, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Idiom, Instagram, Library, Matej Kren, Municipal Library, Prague, Slovak, Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Magazine, Swirling Sculpture, TikTok
#8000Books #CzechRepublic #Czechoslovakia #Idiom #Instagram #Library #MatejKren #MunicipalLibrary #Prague #Slovak #SmithsonianInstitution #SmithsonianMagazine #SwirlingSculpture #TikTok -
"Bleeding in front of a shark" is a great metaphor, tho-- be careful who you trust
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Huh.
Just noticed:
»velvet glove« is a case of people using only half of an idiom nowadays, and also the full English idiom being the opposite of the (short) German one.
So, »iron fist in a velvet glove« is about hidden strength.
German »mit Samthandschuhen anfassen« is the equivalent of »treat with kid gloves«.(Used in AI Agent, AI Spy)
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Quote: "Be the Salt of the Earth
Meaning: To be a person of great integrity and character.In a Sentence: “In the community, Mrs. Thompson is considered the salt of the earth, always ready to lend a helping hand.”"
https://phrasedictionary.org/idioms-for-kindness/
Dont be plastic be salt xD
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I love good turn of phrase, I'm kind of an #idiom junkie.
I just heard "Dropping his bundle"
I can't wait to use that. -
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Punt reception is “muffed”, and Fowler calmly described the player “diving” on it.
This happened.
Right before segueing into Holly Rowe the sideline reporter.
I seent and heard it.
With my own eyes and ears.
#CollegeFootball #culture #idiom #football #commentary #socialmedia
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The early bird catches the own-ass sucking worm.
#pepper #paprika #SweetPepper #suippopaprika #vihannes #vihannekset #kasvis #kasvikset #vegetable #veggie #vegetables #veggies #FoodToot #ruoka #bird #EarlyBird #worm #sanonta #proverb #idiom #lintu #linnut #mato #madot #AikainenLintu
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#idiom : an expression conforming or appropriate to the peculiar structural form of a language
- German: die Redewendung
- Italian: espressione idiomatica
- Portuguese: idioma
- Spanish: modismo
------------
Try Christian's word chain building game @ https://wordwallgame.com
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I've heard this complaint before, from Vladimir Nabokov...about writing in English...he translated his own novel into his native Russian...and was dissatisfied with the result.
Perhaps every language is clumsy?
(My personal experience: I translated books by Dmitry Maksutov from Russian to English. They are books on telescope making. It was a fairly straightforward matter to translate expository text. Maksutov would wax philosophical and poetic in the introductory and concluding paragraphs...and I hated translating those passages. I had to frequently ask native Russian speakers about idioms, colloquialisms, etc. That stuff is often very culture-specific and does not translate well.)
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Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899 and grew up speaking Russian, English, and French. He spent his childhood in Russia, but spent most of his life living in Germany, France, and finally moved to the United States in the 1940s. In America, he switched from writing in Russian to writing primarily in English and found international fame with his novel Lolita, which came out in 1955. In the afterword to his novel, Nabokov wrote that the English language was “second-rate” compared to the “rich” Russian one. He decided to take on the task of translating Lolita, which was published in his native Russian language in 1967. But the author did not find the satisfaction that he was searching for with his translation, and in the postscript to the Russian version, Nabokov expressed this discontent by writing that “the story of this translation is the story of disappointment.” This thesis aims to recognize the reasons behind the author’s self-proclaimed unsuccessful translation and to directly compare the English original with the Russian translation.
https://honors.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/13866
#Writing #Translation #Russian #English #Language #Idioms #Idiom #Slang
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Step into another Hebrew idiom with me as we unpack the fascinating phrase "through thick and thin" in its Hebrew version.
In this lesson video, you'll do just that. We'll focus on pronunciation and intonation, ensuring that you not only say the words but also capture the emotion behind them. You'll walk away with the confidence to weave this phrase seamlessly into your Hebrew dialogue, adding depth and authenticity to your language skills.
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Step into another Hebrew idiom with me as we unpack the fascinating phrase "through thick and thin" in its Hebrew version.
In this lesson video, you'll do just that. We'll focus on pronunciation and intonation, ensuring that you not only say the words but also capture the emotion behind them. You'll walk away with the confidence to weave this phrase seamlessly into your Hebrew dialogue, adding depth and authenticity to your language skills.
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Step into another Hebrew idiom with me as we unpack the fascinating phrase "through thick and thin" in its Hebrew version.
In this lesson video, you'll do just that. We'll focus on pronunciation and intonation, ensuring that you not only say the words but also capture the emotion behind them. You'll walk away with the confidence to weave this phrase seamlessly into your Hebrew dialogue, adding depth and authenticity to your language skills.
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Step into another Hebrew idiom with me as we unpack the fascinating phrase "through thick and thin" in its Hebrew version.
In this lesson video, you'll do just that. We'll focus on pronunciation and intonation, ensuring that you not only say the words but also capture the emotion behind them. You'll walk away with the confidence to weave this phrase seamlessly into your Hebrew dialogue, adding depth and authenticity to your language skills.
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Step into another Hebrew idiom with me as we unpack the fascinating phrase "through thick and thin" in its Hebrew version.
In this lesson video, you'll do just that. We'll focus on pronunciation and intonation, ensuring that you not only say the words but also capture the emotion behind them. You'll walk away with the confidence to weave this phrase seamlessly into your Hebrew dialogue, adding depth and authenticity to your language skills.
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We don't actually need a special constant for this; this is a pretty standard Python #idiom:
NOT_SET = object()
def f(a: int, b: int = NOT_SET):
if b is NOT_SET:
# function called without second argument
...NOT_SET is a bare object, which will never compare equal to anything else, and is a singleton so the natural test is #object #identity. It absolutely distinguishes between "no argument" and "caller happened to pass the #default value #explicitly".
