Idiom & Expression Decoder

An idiom is a group of words whose meaning you cannot get from the words themselves. "Kick the bucket" has nothing to do with buckets. "Spill the beans" has nothing to do with beans. The whole phrase carries one meaning, fixed by use, and the individual words stop counting for anything.

A saying, a proverb, an expression and a fixed phrase are all close relatives of the same thing. English alone runs to tens of thousands of them, and every other language has its own set.

Phrase explains idioms, sayings and fixed expressions, in any language. What an expression means, why the words do not add up to the meaning, where it came from, when people say it, what it signals about the person saying it, and what the equivalent is somewhere else.

Fixed expressions are the part of a language you cannot reason your way into. Nothing in "bite the bullet" tells you what it means. Nothing in "spill the beans" points at a secret. You either know it or you do not, and the ones you half-know are worse — you catch the drift and miss whether it is a compliment, a warning or an insult.

The reverse is just as common. You know what you want to say and not how to say it — how to tell someone a person has died without using the word, how to turn something down without sounding rude, how to say no politely. Phrase gives you the expressions that do that job, with how every one of them lands.

Type the phrase in the box above, or describe what you are trying to say.