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Idioms Quiz — 50 Questions with Answers

5 rounds · 50 questions

Round 1 of 5 · Question 1 of 50

Complete the Idiom

A piece of ___.

Show all 50 questions with answers and explanations

Every question, answer and explanation

Complete the Idiom

  1. A piece of ___.

    Answer cake

    The phrase most likely comes from cakewalk contests, where a cake was the prize for the best dance. That is also where cakewalk as a word for something easy comes from, so two common expressions share one origin.

  2. It's raining cats and ___.

    Answer dogs

    Nobody knows where this one comes from, and the popular explanations — animals washed off thatched roofs, or a Greek word for waterfall — have no evidence behind them. It is one of the many idioms whose confident origin story was invented later than the phrase.

  3. Break a ___!

    Answer leg

    Theater superstition holds that wishing someone good luck brings the opposite, so performers wish for the reverse instead. Dancers say something different again, and opera has its own version, which suggests the custom matters more than the words.

  4. The ball is in your ___.

    Answer court

    From tennis: once the ball crosses the net, nothing more can be done until the other player acts. The image survives because it captures a specific kind of waiting — not idle, but unable to move until someone else does.

  5. Once in a blue ___.

    Answer moon

    Originally it just meant something absurd or impossible. The astronomical meaning came much later, and the familiar definition — a second full moon in one calendar month — traces to a magazine article in 1946 that misread an older almanac.

  6. Spill the ___.

    Answer beans

    American, and only about a century old. The story about ancient Greeks voting with beans is repeated everywhere and has no support: the phrase appears in the early twentieth century meaning to spoil something, and the sense of revealing a secret came after.

  7. Feeling under the ___.

    Answer weather

    From sailing. A seasick sailor was sent below, out of the wind and spray on the weather side of the ship — so being under the weather originally meant being physically sheltered from it.

  8. Hit the ___ on the head.

    Answer nail

    From carpentry, and very old — versions appear in English from the fifteenth century. Its staying power comes from the picture: a nail hit anywhere else bends, and only the exact center drives it straight.

  9. Let the cat out of the ___.

    Answer bag

    The usual explanation involves a market swindle, a piglet swapped for a cat in a sack. It is a good story and unverified, and the earliest known uses of the phrase do not mention markets at all.

  10. When pigs ___.

    Answer fly

    This kind of expression has a name: an adynaton, a figure of speech that states an impossibility to mean never. Other languages have their own versions — Spanish waits for frogs to grow hair, and Russian for a crayfish to whistle on a mountain.

What Does It Mean?

  1. What does 'bite the bullet' mean?

    Answer To face something unpleasant with courage

    The battlefield surgery explanation — a wounded soldier given a bullet to bite instead of an anesthetic — is repeated everywhere but has never been documented. The first recorded use in this sense is from Kipling in 1891, long after anesthetics existed.

  2. What does 'cost an arm and a leg' mean?

    Answer To be extremely expensive

    Mid-twentieth-century American, and the story that portrait painters charged extra for arms and legs is false: portraits were priced by size and by how many figures they contained, not by limbs. The phrase simply names two things nobody would part with.

  3. What does 'burn the midnight oil' mean?

    Answer To work late into the night

    Literal in origin — before electricity, working late meant burning lamp oil. The phrase survived the technology that produced it, which is common: we still dial numbers and hang up.

  4. What does 'sit on the fence' mean?

    Answer To avoid taking a side

    The image is of someone perched on a boundary between two properties, belonging to neither side. It is one of the few idioms that is mildly critical by default — nobody describes their own caution this way.

  5. What does 'throw in the towel' mean?

    Answer To give up

    From boxing, where a cornerman throws a towel into the ring to stop the fight. The older version used a sponge, which is what was actually kept in the corner, and the towel replaced it as equipment changed.

  6. What does 'cut corners' mean?

    Answer To do something cheaply or carelessly

    Literally taking a shorter path by cutting across a corner rather than going around it. The meaning has drifted to include doing something badly to save effort, which the original image does not quite carry.

  7. What does 'the last straw' mean?

    Answer The final problem that makes everything unbearable

    Shortened from the straw that broke the camel's back. The point of the full version is that the final straw is not heavy — it is the accumulation that matters, and a complaint about a small thing is often really about the pile beneath it.

  8. What does 'get cold feet' mean?

    Answer To suddenly lose the nerve to do something

    The phrase entered English in the late nineteenth century, and an earlier German expression about cold feet meaning to have no money may or may not be related. The physical sensation is real enough that the metaphor needs no explanation.

  9. What does 'a blessing in disguise' mean?

    Answer Something good that first seemed bad

    The phrase appears in an eighteenth-century hymn and spread from there. It describes something only recognizable in hindsight, which is why it is nearly always used about the past and almost never as a prediction.

  10. What does 'beat around the bush' mean?

    Answer To avoid getting to the point

    From hunting, where beaters struck the undergrowth to drive birds out toward the guns. Beating around the bush rather than in it meant working the edges without flushing anything — approaching without arriving.

Proverbs — Fill the Blank

  1. Don't count your chickens before they ___.

    Answer hatch

    The advice is against counting on results before they exist, and the fable behind it is old: a milkmaid plans her fortune from unsold milk and drops the pail. It survives because the failure it describes is a failure of accounting, not of luck.

  2. The early bird catches the ___.

    Answer worm

    Recorded in English collections from the seventeenth century. It is one of the few proverbs with a well-known rebuttal — the second mouse gets the cheese — which shows how a proverb can be answered rather than disproved.

  3. Don't put all your eggs in one ___.

    Answer basket

    The advice is about spreading risk, and it is the everyday form of a principle finance later formalized. What makes it good advice is that it costs something: several baskets are more trouble than one, and the proverb accepts that cost.

  4. A bird in the hand is worth two in the ___.

    Answer bush

    From falconry and hunting, where a caught bird was worth more than better prospects still flying. It is the argument for the certain and modest over the uncertain and large — the exact opposite advice to several other proverbs, which is normal for proverbs.

  5. People in glass houses shouldn't throw ___.

    Answer stones

    A version appears in Chaucer, so the image is at least six hundred years old — remarkable given that domestic glass was a luxury then. It survives because the picture is exact: the throw and the damage happen in the same place.

  6. Strike while the iron is ___.

    Answer hot

    From the forge, where iron can only be shaped in the short window while it glows. The proverb is about timing rather than speed, and the difference matters: acting early is not the same as acting at the right moment.

  7. Actions speak louder than ___.

    Answer words

    The sense goes back centuries in English and has parallels in many languages. It is usually said about someone else, which is part of its function — it is a way of judging a promise without directly calling it a lie.

  8. The grass is always greener on the other side of the ___.

    Answer fence

    The grass looks greener from an angle because you see the sides of the blades rather than the gaps between them. Whether the proverb was built on that observation is unknown, but the effect is real and the metaphor is unusually literal.

  9. Don't look a gift horse in the ___.

    Answer mouth

    A horse's age can be judged from its teeth, so inspecting the mouth of a horse you were given is checking what it was worth. The phrase is medieval and appears in Latin before English.

  10. Every cloud has a silver ___.

    Answer lining

    From Milton, who wrote of a cloud turning out its silver lining. The image is precise — the light is behind the cloud, which is why the edge shines while the middle stays dark.

Body-Part Idioms

  1. What does 'pull someone's leg' mean?

    Answer To tease or joke with someone

    The origin is unknown, and the frequently repeated story about thieves tripping victims with a hook has no evidence. What is documented is that the phrase is nineteenth-century and originally carried a harsher sense than the friendly teasing it means now.

  2. What does 'keep a straight face' mean?

    Answer To stop yourself from laughing

    The expression names the effort rather than the result, which is why it works: keeping the face still is visibly harder than letting it move, and everyone watching knows it.

  3. What does 'be all ears' mean?

    Answer To listen with full attention

    One of a family of expressions that exaggerate a body part to mean full attention — all eyes, all thumbs, an old hand. English builds a lot of idioms this way, which is part of why it has so many.

  4. What does 'give someone the cold shoulder' mean?

    Answer To deliberately ignore someone

    The story that a cold shoulder of mutton was served to unwelcome guests is folk etymology. The phrase appears in Walter Scott in 1816, and there is no record of the food custom before the phrase — which is usually the giveaway.

  5. What does 'play it by ear' mean?

    Answer To improvise as things happen

    From playing music without written notes, working out the tune as you go. The metaphor carries the same mix of skill and improvisation: playing by ear is not the same as not knowing what you are doing.

  6. What does 'see eye to eye' mean?

    Answer To agree with someone

    The phrase is older than it sounds and appears in the King James Bible. Its usefulness is that it describes agreement about a viewpoint rather than about a fact — two people can see eye to eye and both be wrong.

  7. What does 'have a change of heart' mean?

    Answer To change your opinion or feelings

    The heart as the seat of feeling is ancient, and the phrase treats a change of mind as something that happens to you rather than something you do. That framing is doing quiet work: it makes reversing a decision sound less like an admission.

  8. What does 'stick your neck out' mean?

    Answer To take a risk for something

    From the image of an animal extending its neck and becoming vulnerable, or possibly from the executioner's block. Either way the picture is the same — the risk is taken by exposing yourself, not by acting.

  9. What does 'off the top of my head' mean?

    Answer Without checking or careful thought

    It signals that the answer is unchecked, which is the whole point: the phrase is a disclaimer attached in advance. Using it and then being wrong is treated very differently from just being wrong.

  10. What does 'put your foot in your mouth' mean?

    Answer To say something embarrassing

    The image is of a remark you would like to take back and cannot. Variants exist across languages, and the English version is notable for putting the blame on the mouth rather than on the speaker.

Hard Mode

  1. What does 'burn your bridges' mean?

    Answer To destroy any way back to a former position

    From military practice: an army that burned the bridge behind it could not retreat, which made the commitment total. That is the real sense — not just damage, but the deliberate removal of a way back.

  2. What does 'throw someone under the bus' mean?

    Answer To betray someone for your own advantage

    American and recent, probably from politics or sport in the twentieth century, though no first use has been established. It has spread quickly into other languages, which is unusual for an idiom that depends on a specific modern image.

  3. What does 'the elephant in the room' mean?

    Answer An obvious problem everyone avoids mentioning

    The point is not that the problem is hidden but that everyone can see it and nobody will name it. That is why it appears so often in workplaces — the phrase exists precisely for situations where naming a thing is socially costly.

  4. What does 'bite off more than you can chew' mean?

    Answer To take on more than you can handle

    The image is physical and immediate, which is why it survives while other food idioms fade. It is also one of the few that describes ambition rather than failure: the mistake happens at the moment of taking, not of chewing.

  5. What does 'a wolf in sheep's clothing' mean?

    Answer A dangerous person disguised as harmless

    From Aesop, and the image also appears in the Gospel of Matthew, which is how it reached most European languages. The danger it names is specific — not an enemy, but an enemy you have already let in.

  6. What does 'read between the lines' mean?

    Answer To find the meaning that is not stated directly

    From the practice of hiding messages in the space between written lines, sometimes literally in invisible ink. The metaphor moved from concealed text to implied meaning, and the second sense long ago swallowed the first.

  7. What does 'the pot calling the kettle black' mean?

    Answer Criticizing a fault you have yourself

    Both vessels were blackened by the same fire, which is the part that makes it sting: the accusation is true and the accuser is equally guilty. It entered English in a 1620 translation of Don Quixote.

  8. What does 'steal someone's thunder' mean?

    Answer To take the credit or attention meant for another

    This one is literally true and documented. A playwright named John Dennis invented a new way of making stage thunder for a play in 1704; the play failed, and he then heard his own device used in a production of Macbeth. His complaint gave English the phrase.

  9. What does 'jump on the bandwagon' mean?

    Answer To join something only because it is popular

    From American politics, where a band on a wagon drew crowds to a campaign and supporters would climb aboard as it gained momentum. The disapproval built into the phrase was there from the start.

  10. What does 'play devil's advocate' mean?

    Answer To argue the opposite side for the sake of debate

    This was a real office. The Catholic Church appointed someone to argue against a proposed canonization, to make sure the case was tested. The role was largely abolished in 1983, by which point the phrase had long outgrown it.

About the Idioms Quiz

Idioms are the part of a language that stops making sense the moment you look directly at it. Nobody who says it is raining cats and dogs pictures anything; the phrase has been worn smooth by use until it means only what it means. That is exactly why it is the last thing a learner acquires and the first thing a native speaker stops noticing, and why a quiz on it feels less like a test and more like being shown the inside of your own speech.

Fifty questions in five rounds of ten. Two rounds ask you to complete a phrase — one for idioms, one for proverbs — and two ask what a phrase means, with the fourth of those narrowed to the ones built out of body parts. The fifth is a hard round. Four options each, and the answer arrives the instant you choose.

The difference between the two forms is worth having straight before you start, because the rounds are split along it. A proverb is a complete sentence offering advice, and it can be quoted on its own: it says something about how the world works. An idiom is a fragment you drop into a sentence of your own, and it says nothing at all until you put it somewhere. Both are figurative and both are learned by ear, which is why people who use them faultlessly can still stumble when asked to explain one cold.

How it works
  1. In the fill-in rounds a word is missing and four candidates are offered. Say the phrase in your head — the right one usually sounds right before it looks right.
  2. In the meaning rounds you get the phrase and four definitions. The wrong options are built from the literal reading, which is the trap the phrase itself sets.
  3. The answer appears as soon as you choose, and a miss holds the phrase on screen a moment longer. Tap the screen when you have read it.
  4. You finish with a mark out of fifty and five round scores, and the full list with answers sits below. Which half is weaker — filling the blank or knowing what the phrase means — shows only in those round scores, never in the total.

Frequently asked questions

The version I know is worded differently.

Very likely, and that is normal rather than a mistake on either side. Most of these phrases have regional variants — a different animal, a different verb, a whole extra clause that some places keep and others dropped a century ago. Where a phrase varies, we use the most widely printed form and put the blank on a word the variants agree about, so a regional habit never costs you the point.

What is the difference between an idiom and a proverb?

A proverb is a whole sentence and gives advice: it can stand alone and still make its point. An idiom is a phrase with no point of its own until you build a sentence around it. The two get lumped together because both are figurative, but they behave differently in speech — you quote a proverb, and you simply use an idiom without ever announcing it.

Where do these phrases come from?

Often nowhere anyone can prove. Idiom origins attract confident stories about ships, taverns and medieval punishments, and a startling proportion of those stories were invented long after the phrase, by people who found the mystery unbearable. So this quiz asks what phrases mean and never asks where they came from — the meanings are settled, the histories usually are not.

Do idioms translate into other languages?

The body-part ones travel further than any other kind, which is why they have a round to themselves — a great many languages independently landed on a wide face for being well connected and a heavy mouth for keeping a secret. Most other idioms do not travel at all, and translating one literally is the classic way to produce a sentence nobody can parse.

Will the Idioms Quiz improve my English?

It will improve the half of the skill that matters most and is easiest to gain: recognizing a phrase and not being derailed by it. Producing idioms is the harder half and it carries risk, because a slightly wrong idiom is far more conspicuous than a plain sentence. Recognize widely, deploy sparingly, is a reasonable policy for anyone who did not grow up with them.

Is the Idioms Quiz free, and do I need to be a native speaker?

Free, with no account and no email, and no — idioms are learned rather than inherited, and plenty of native speakers use a phrase daily without ever having been asked what it means. The middle rounds ask exactly that, which is where the two groups turn out to be closer than expected.

How long does the Idioms Quiz take?

Seven minutes or so for the fifty. Completing an idiom is quick because the ending either arrives or it does not; the meaning rounds take longer, since a phrase you can finish is not always a phrase you could explain.