What do you mean by 'idiomatic'? Are you saying that "Wow! She's too beautiful!" means 'not really beautiful'? I know for a fact that too means also 'very' in a formal register, for example: "Thank you,

Mr. Tom, The sentence in question is both understandable and adequate from the viewpoint of native English speakers. Apart from its use in idioms, spite has the following meaning: 'to deliberately upset someone or cause them problems'.

Could you tell me what part of speech is 'falling in love' here? falling in love is, of course, an idiom, so we're not talking about literal falling. falling is a verb. ( in is a preposition; love is a noun.) It is used in a

I think we should keep the discussion in the context of "english as a second language". I think idioms can be very difficult for the individual whose native tongue is not English. It can be very difficult to teach the meaning of these

I don't like this any more than the next guy. He'd get ahead if he simply worked harder than the next guy. None of us are entitled to any more than the next guy. Ok, who is this NEXT GUY I've been always hearing

He was drowned in the raging torrent. His speech was drowned by the rabble. His plea was drowned in/by the clatter of hooves. It seems possible to me that we're confusing "drowned" as a metaphor with " drowned out " as an

But often, using a noun as an adjective is idiomatic. For example, we say the church tower, castle walls , a pirate ship , star wars , monkey business , monkey shines, monkey wrench , etc. English is flexible about using words as different parts

"When I go from hence let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable." This is a simple application of the rules for indirectly reported speech as against quoted speech. He said: "What I have seen is

It's a different sort of thing. I'd have to Google it, but I associate it with some TV person-to-person type interview program - somebody who interviews famous people - Charlie Rose, Larry King, somebody like that. I don't think of it

. You should stick to your current goal. Don't 'try to' use such cliches-- they must appear reasonably naturally. Idioms and slang both suffer at the early use of non-native speakers, who are not familiar enough with the language or