DID YOU KNOW?
I often see videos and posts on lists of idioms swarming social media. Finding and creating such lists is easy. Getting students to remember them is easy. Knowing the the right register, frequency and appropriacy of a particular idiom is hard. Let's have a look at some idioms meaning "really happy." - Over the moon - On cloud nine - Happy as Larry - On top of the world - In Seventh Heaven - Happy as a clam - To be tickled pink I am sure you know most of them. But guess what? We natives basically never use them 😨. Maybe "Over the moon" and "on top of the world" might be found in spoken, sometimes written, register but others are just not common although they exist. So what do we natives prefer? We prefer collocations (and these are common): - Absolutely delighted - So overjoyed - Just pleased beyond words - Absolutely ecstatic - Thrilled to bits The idioms above are usually used as, what I call, "Isolated structures" and just would not be us...