English Idioms: Plants

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Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Roger Basick. 

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And I’m Gillian Woodward. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live. 

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We will begin this program by hearing from one of our writers. 

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“When I was younger, my mother told me that I liked plants more than I liked most people. She was partially right. I loved my friends. But I also loved spending time at the park, watching bugs and flowers. I used to sit in a tree for hours, reading. Being around these things put me at peace.” 

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Not everyone likes being around plants as much as our writer friend does. But plants have been important to people throughout history. Some of the oldest writing in the world is about plants. A poem from the Chinese Tang dynasty uses grass and trees to describe how lonely a wife feels while her husband is away at a war: “In Yan, the grass is blue as the bluest silk thread. In Qin, the branches of the mulberry tree are low and green. Does a husband think of returning home, the moment his wife is heart-broken?” The beauty of plants has been a constant subject of poetry for generations.

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It is no wonder, then, that people talk about plants often. This is true in every language, including English. But you may have noticed that many of these sayings make no sense. A native English speaker may talk about hitting plants with no other plants in the conversation. Or, he may call someone a flower when she clearly is not a plant. 

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Native English speakers often use idioms in their speech. Idioms are words and sayings for which the meaning is not clear from the individual words. These are simply expressions that native speakers say that make sense to other native speakers. But these expressions are difficult for non-native speakers to understand. 

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In this week’s Spotlight, we are exploring six common plant idioms. Most are not about plants at all. But using these phrases will help you learn new words and sound like a native speaker. 

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Our first plant idiom is the saying that someone is “pushing up daisies.” It means that someone has died. A mother might warn her son, “If you keep driving that fast, you will be pushing up daisies sooner than you wish” –meaning that speeding might cause her son’s death in a traffic accident.

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People often use this expression in a light or humorous way. A daisy is a flower with white petals and a yellow center. These flowers grow in fields and places with bright sunlight. Symbolically, daisies represent innocence and purity.  This idiom came into common use during World War I in Europe. Perhaps saying “pushing up daisies” offered a less grim way for soldiers to speak of their comrades who had died in battle. So, “pushing up daisies” means saying that someone is dead. But this idiom is best used in informal conversations—not in formal situations.

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Our second idiom is said differently depending on where you live. In the US, a person might say that someone “cannot see the forest for the trees.” In the UK, people would say that a person “cannot see the wood for the trees.” Each expression has the same meaning, but the word for a group of trees differs. 

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This idiom means that a person is so concerned with small details that the person cannot see the more important bigger picture or purpose of something. 

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Imagine that a woman is working on part of a project. She is very good at refining her work. But she does not exactly understand what the purpose of the project is. She provides a good result, but her work does not improve the project as a whole. Someone might comment that she “could not see the forest for the trees.” 

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Looking at only the colorful circles of paintbrush strokes might distract the viewer from seeing the people on the lawn in George Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The viewer might miss seeing the forest (the big picture) for the trees (the tiny dots).

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Have you ever grown flowers? Then the next saying, to “nip something in the bud,” may be familiar to you. A bud is the start of a plant’s flower. Nipping is a way of saying “to cut.” Nipping a bud means cutting a beginning of a flower. This stops the flower from growing. 

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But when people nip something in the bud, they are not usually talking about a plant. They mean that they want to stop something at an early point. 

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Maybe a man notices his son has started smoking. The father knows this is dangerous. He takes away his son’s cigarettes and explains the health issues to his boy. He would be nipping his son’s drug use in the bud. 

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Our fourth plant idiom is to “beat around the bush.” Do not worry. This idiom is not as violent as it seems. When someone beats around the bush, she avoids talking directly about a subject. Often someone may beat around the bush about a subject because it is difficult or painful to speak about a subject. Someone might tell this person to “stop beating around the bush and tell me what you mean.” 

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For example, a husband who resigned from his job on Friday may avoid speaking about this to his wife. He tells his wife that he does not need to go to work on the coming Monday. But Tuesday morning when he does not go to work, she may say, “Why did you beat around the bush the whole weekend and not tell me that you had resigned?” Avoiding a difficult truth is one of the reasons to “beat around the bush.

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Beating around the bush has interesting origins. English hunters used servants to hit the branches of large plants or bushes to force birds or animals to come out so the hunters could catch these creatures. People “beat around the bush” so the indirect action might bring about the direct result. The meaning of the saying shifted over time as people forgot about this custom from hunting. Today it shows the value that English speakers have for talking directly about a subject, even a difficult subject.

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Our fifth English idiom is to “hear it through the grapevine.” This saying may seem funny at first. You cannot hear anything through a grape plant! But the expression means to hear through rumors or from another person. Imagine a woman hears from her friend that her boyfriend is seeing another woman. She will clearly be angry. But since she ‘heard it through the grapevine’, she cannot be sure it is true. 

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The saying also has little to do with plants. In 1859 a new telegraph line ran from Placerville, California, to Virginia City, Nevada. Operators used trees and fences to keep the wires above ground. These telegraph wires looked like grapevines. Getting a message on this new telegraph was called getting the message through the grapevine.  Soon after this during the American Civil War, hearing something “through the grapevine” described the informal communication or rumors about the war. This information spread from one person to another person to another person rather than hearing an official announcement.

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Our sixth plant idiom is “a thorn in one’s side.” A thorn is a small, sharp part of some plants. Touching a plant with thorns is difficult and painful, but not deadly. When something is a thorn in someone’s side, it is a small, sharp pain that is difficult to get rid of. 

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You will often hear this expression in films. An evil villain may call the hero a thorn in his side whenever the hero stops the villain’s plans. The villain is insulting the hero, calling him a small pain. But the villain means the hero is a problem: “You have been a thorn in my side for too long!”

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Many other plant idioms exist in the English language. These are some of our favorites. Using them might not help you talk about plants themselves. But these expressions will help you sound more like a native speaker. Practice them as much as you can and use them with your friends! 

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What interesting plant idioms do you have in your language? Which plants are commonly used in these expressions? You can leave a comment on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and X. You can also get our programs delivered directly to your Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English app. 

Voice 2

The writer and producer was Dan Christmann. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. This program is called, ‘English Idioms: Plants’. 

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We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye. 

Question:

What interesting plant idioms do you have in your language? Which plants are commonly used in these expressions?