Tree Sayings

EmilyGL

English has common idioms using trees. Here is one which means that you cannot see the big picture because of focussing too much on the details; the overall view is sacrificed to the minor parts:
You can't see the woods for the trees.
This saying is very much in use today, yet it dates back at least to the sixteenth century!

Another, later, idiom, comes from America and the nineteenth century:
Barking up the wrong tree.
The background is that dogs, originally hunting dogs, were barking by a tree which they believed to shelter an animal; however, the animal had escaped onto another tree. Nowadays, this expression is very much used, and it means that you are looking in the wrong place, or are pursuing the wrong course of action to get something.

Now here is an idiom which looks as if it refers directly to a tree, but does not!
Turning over a new leaf.
This expression makes to make a fresh start, to do something differently and better. However, the leaf here does not mean the leaf of a tree; it means the page of a book, and it has been used in this sense again at least from the sixteenth century. The saying is common today.
 
 
 


Copper beech tree in Oxfordshire. By Graham Horn, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13745078
 
 
專欄文章僅代表作者個人觀點,不代表咖啡滔客的立場。

回應 (0)

登入之後,添加評論 登入 »
Popular ribbon

來自:

住在:

授課種類

講師會的語言

英語   母語程度

講師專欄排行榜

  • The Isle of Purbeck, England, UK

    Main photo by Bermicourt - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link I heartily recommend visiting the Isle of ...

    EmilyGL

    EmilyGL

    1
    5658
    2019年 4月 4日
  • Anglo-Saxon Verse

    Main photo by By Jononmac46 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?cur...

    EmilyGL

    EmilyGL

    0
    5596
    2019年 5月 15日
  • 英語

    The Same But Different

    I have moved between Scotland and England several times in my life, and in some ways, that should b...

    EmilyGL

    EmilyGL

    0
    5353
    2019年 3月 27日
  • 英語

    Man with a Movie Camera

    Without doubt, the film which I would recommend to anyone is Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, Man with a...

    EmilyGL

    EmilyGL

    0
    5208
    2019年 4月 25日
« 返回講師專欄的一覽表

線上客服諮詢