12 Idioms English Should Steal From Other Languages
English is a magpie language — it has stolen vocabulary from roughly everywhere and shows no sign of stopping. But it has been oddly restrained about stealing idioms, and other languages have some genuinely superior equipment. Twelve we'd import tomorrow.
To slide in on a shrimp sandwich
glida in på en räkmacka
To get somewhere without earning it — coasting on privilege or luck. The picture is perfect: not just arriving easily, but arriving on a canapé. English has "born on third base," which is fine, but lacks the seafood.
Ache of the world
Weltschmerz
The specific melancholy that comes from comparing the world as it is with the world as it could be. Not depression, not cynicism — a tender, tired sadness about reality. English borrowed the word occasionally but never fully adopted it, which is a shame, because the feeling is universal.
Reading the air
kuuki wo yomu
Sensing the unspoken mood of a room and adjusting accordingly. Someone who fails at it is "unable to read the air." English says "read the room," which is close — but "air" is better, because the thing you're reading isn't in the furniture, it's in the atmosphere.
To walk around hot porridge
kiertää kuin kissa kuumaa puuroa
Circling the difficult subject without touching it, like a cat around a bowl too hot to eat. English has "beat around the bush," but the cat is funnier, and the image explains why the person is stalling — it isn't cowardice, it's that the topic is genuinely too hot right now.
The spirit of the staircase
l'esprit de l'escalier
The devastating comeback that arrives too late — as you're leaving, on the stairs, long after the conversation ended. English has no word for this and desperately needs one, given how much of modern life is composed of it.
To have the moon
estar en la luna
To be somewhere else entirely — daydreaming, absent, physically present but mentally in orbit. English says "head in the clouds," which is a shorter trip. The moon captures the sheer distance of a properly absent mind.
Not all doughnuts come out with a hole
non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco
Sometimes things don't work out as planned, and that's ordinary rather than tragic. A gentler, floury cousin of "you can't win them all" — and better, because it blames the process rather than the person.
Now the monkey comes out of the sleeve
nu komt de aap uit de mouw
The moment the truth finally emerges — the hidden thing revealed. It's a first cousin of our cat out of the bag, but the monkey up a sleeve suggests deliberate concealment by a performer, which is often more accurate.
To pay the duck
pagar o pato
To take the blame for something you didn't do. It comes from an old folk tale about a man landed with the bill for a duck he never ordered — an experience that has never gone out of style in any office anywhere.
Not my circus, not my monkeys
nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy
Not my problem, not my responsibility, and please don't hand me those monkeys. English speakers have already begun quietly borrowing this one, which proves the thesis of the whole article.
To be in the middle of the butter eye
midt i smørøyet
To be in the very best possible spot — the butter eye being the melting pool of butter in the middle of a bowl of porridge. It's cosier than "in the sweet spot" and, crucially, edible.
Even a sheet of paper is lighter with two people
백지장도 맞들면 낫다
Any task is easier shared, even a weightless one — because help is about company as much as force. English has "many hands make light work," but this version makes the gentler point: the paper wasn't heavy. You just shouldn't have to carry it alone.
Why idioms travel badly — and sometimes anyway
Idioms are the most local part of a language. They're built from what people eat, work with, and joke about, so they're the last thing to translate cleanly — a shrimp sandwich only means luxury where shrimp sandwiches signal luxury.
And yet English has borrowed before, quietly. "Long time no see" and "lose face" are calques from Chinese — word-for-word translations rather than sound-borrowings. "It goes without saying" is French cela va sans dire wearing an English coat. "Flea market" is marché aux puces. Once a translated phrase gets used casually enough, nobody remembers it was an import — which is exactly how "not my circus, not my monkeys" is naturalizing right now, in real time, on the internet.
Which is the cheerful conclusion: idiom-making never stopped. New ones are forming this year, borrowed and homegrown, and most will vanish while a few fossilize forever. That process is the subject of our hub post, How Idioms Are Born (and Die) — and if you want to see how badly the process gets misremembered, the fake origins file is right there.
Quick FAQ
Can English really borrow idioms?
It already has — "long time no see" and "lose face" come from Chinese, "it goes without saying" from French. Borrowing usually happens through translation and contact, not deliberate adoption.
What's a calque?
A loan translation — a phrase translated word for word rather than borrowed as sound. "Flea market" from marché aux puces is a classic.
Why don't idioms translate well?
Their images come from local food, work and weather. Translation carries the meaning but usually drops the picture, which is where the charm lives.
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The IdiomJar team researches phrase origins from dictionaries, digitized newspaper archives, and the work of etymologists — and clearly labels anything that's folklore rather than fact. Read more about how we work.