HOP HOP HOP into 2023.
A belated happy new year to all my friends and students, and a VERY belated return to Marks’s Phrase.
I’ve learned not to make promises I can’t keep, but in the spirit of new year’s resolutions, I will try harder to post more here on this phrase page . . .try, try, try!
I did have a wonderful Christmas and お正月. I spent it with family at home, quietly. I will post some pictures below for those of you who are interested.
In the meantime, I will continue my new year idiom tradition. This year is the year of the rabbit. So here are some common English rabbit idioms:
- Like a rabbit caught in the headlights. To be very surprised and freeze. When I asked my son where he was all night, he looked at me like a rabbit caught in the headlights
- Timid as a rabbit. Someone who is very shy or scared. It took a lot of courage to propose to my wife, I’ve always been as timid as a rabbit.
- Pull a rabbit out of the hat. To do something surprising or amazing. I can’t believe I made it in time for the party New Year’s Eve. I really pulled a rabbit out of a hat that day. (I’ll tell you the details later).
- Multiply like rabbits. To have a lot of kids. That family has 19 KIDS! The parents really multiply like rabbits.
- The rabbit died. To be pregnant. I guess we’re having another kid . . .the rabbit died.
- Go down the rabbit hole. To start a strange journey or search that only becomes curiouser and curiouser. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, click on this link.
- If you chase two rabbits you can’t catch either one. An easy to understand (?) proverb. The government is trying to cut taxes and increase welfare at the same time, but if you chase two rabbits you will not catch either one.
- Rabbit food. Salad greens. One of my new year’s resolutions is to diet, so I’ve only been eating rabbit food this week.
- Rabbit on. To talk and talk and talk! I called to say a quick happy new year but he rabbited on for 45 minutes!
- Rabbit’s foot. A good luck charm . . . but clearly not lucky for the rabbit! I put a rabbit’s foot in my pen case for good luck on my entrance exams.
Today’s BGM:
In a cottage in the wood
In the cottage in the woods,
Little man by the window stood.
Saw a rabbit hopping by,
Knocking at the door.
“Help me! Help me! Help me!” he said,
“Before the hunter shoots me dead!”
“Little rabbit, come to me,
Happy we will be.”
A rabbit song for adults; White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane
