MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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The polish lady I work with has a reasonably good grasp of English but does not understand idioms. Obviously now she has told me this I am trying to communicate using as many as possible.
What are your favourites?
"Thick as two short planks" has always been a good one. Translates into German as "Dumm wie stroh" - 'stupid as straw'.
Next time she asks your opinion, tell her it's not up to you, it's down to her.
[pedant mode] Most of the "idioms" on the idiomsite seem to be straight metaphors or even just aphorisms/truisms. The essence of a true idiom is that the listener/reader can't possibly work out the intended meaning from the actual words, e.g "hard cheese" to mean bad luck [/pedant mode]
'Well I'll go t'foot of our stairs'
Meaning 'How surprising!' in Lancastrian.
'Well I'll go t'foot of our stairs'
A perfect example of an idiom - utterly impossible to work out the intended meaning by examining the actual words
[pedant mode] this actually should read "well I'll go t't'foot...", because the full expression requires "to the" and therefore two apostrophes of omission are needed [/pedant mode]