Re: Idioms (was Website update)

On 6 Jun 99, at 18:56, Matt Pearson wrote:

> Sally Caves wrote:
>
> >Tom Wier wrote:
>
> >> Here's another interesting
> >> topic that I haven't seen much on the list before (at least that
> >> I can remember):  idioms.  What idioms do people have in their
> >> languages?
> >
> >This topic was raised a year ago, when I first logged on.
> >Matt Pearson has some good ones.  Ask him about "empty thunder."
>
> "Empty thunder" means a lot of pointless noise or hubbub, much ado
> about nothing, sound and fury signifying nothing, etc..  Skimming
> through the Tokana-to-English dictionary, I find a few more:
>
> "Convincing the sheep to eat grass" means exerting a lot of energy
> on a task which really doesn't require that much effort, or to go
> to the trouble of convincing someone who already share's ones
> views ('preaching to the choir', we call it).
>
My favourite ever idiomatic expresion is Burmese, roughly "to put
legs on a snake", ie to exagerate a claim or story to such a degree
that it becomes unbelievable, almost like "making a mountain out
of a molehill".