1. Exploring Idioms Writing 421
Adapted from Kelly Gallagher’s Write Like This

2. Exploring Idioms
IDIOMS are words, phrases, or expressions that cannot be taken literally.
In other words, when used in everyday language, they have a meaning other than the basic one you would find in the dictionary.
Every language has its own idioms.
“Break a leg”.
“Raining cats and dogs”.
Exploring Idioms

3. “Kick the Bucket” Which theory best suits?
In 1931, during the construction of the Empire State Building, a bucket of cement fell, killing a construction worker. As the man lay dying, he convulsed, and his foot kicked over a bucket.
Exploring Idioms

4. “Kick the Bucket” Which theory best suits?
While running across a farm, a Greek marathon runner tripped over a wooden bucket and died.
Exploring Idioms

5. “Kick the Bucket” Which theory best suits:
Animals were often hung from a beam (then called a bucket) before being slaughtered. They often kicked the beam when they were killed.
Exploring Idioms

6. “Kick the Bucket” Which theory best suits:
In a fit of anger, a sheriff in Dodge, Kansas, by the name of Bernard Bucket shot and killed a prisoner who had kicked him.
Exploring Idioms

7. According to WORDORIGINS.ORG
This evocative phrase meaning to die is of uncertain etymology. The most likely explanation is that it does not refer to a washing tub or pail, the sense of bucket that most of us are familiar with. Instead, it comes from another sense of bucket meaning a yoke or beam from which something can be hung. The imagery evoked by the phrase is that of an animal being hung up for slaughter, kicking the beam from which it is suspended in its death throes.
(Wilton 2011)
Exploring Idioms

8. With or Writing 421 Editing Groups
The Idiom Challenge
With or Writing 421 Editing Groups

9. Challenge
Let’s try to guess the etymology of idioms that have been Gordon-selected.
Break the ice.
Throw the book at someone.
Make hay while the sun shines.
As mad as a hatter.
Without rhyme or reason.
Make no bones about the matter.
Throw in the towel/sponge.
Armed to the teeth.
Three sheets to the wind.
Can’t hold a candle to…
It’s raining cats and dogs.
Each group of two students will choose an idiom and create four possible PLAUSIBLE theories to explain it (including the correct one). We shall then exchange and compare them to see how we do.
Exploring Idioms

10. Writing 421A Editing Groups
Exploring Idioms

11. Writing 421D Editing Groups
Exploring Idioms

12. Finding Etymologies http://www.fun-with-words.com/etymology.html
Exploring Idioms