Language Arts Grade Six

Unit Twelve, Lesson Four: Idioms

  1. cell
  2. smell
  3. yell
  4. spend
  5. blend
  6. trend
  7. ghost
  8. deserted
  9. abandon
  10. ruins
  1. remnant
  2. claim
  3. prospect
  4. marker
  5. membrane
  6. organelle
  7. chloroplast
  8. nucleus
  9. mitochondria
  10. cytosol
Idioms

Idioms are expressions which have a meaning which is not the same as the meaning of its actual words. There are many common idioms which you have probably heard many times. Here are a few examples: 


  IDIOM				MEANING
grab a bite			get something to eat
catch some Zs			sleep for a while or take a nap
bent out of shape		needlessly worried about something
hit the hay			go to bed or go to sleep
threw in the towel		to give up
went out on a limb		take a risk
sleep on it			take at least a day to think about something 
				before making a decision

Consider this sentence: 


  Jill hit the sack at nine o'clock last night.
Does this mean that she actually punched a sack of some kind? Of course not! Most of us understand that it means that she went to bed at nine o'clock. The phrase "hit the sack" is an idiom which is understood to mean "go to bed."

Here are a few idioms used in sentences: 


  Joe hit the hay after a hard day of work.

  James threw in the towel after being unsuccessful three times in a row.

  Jill went out on a limb to help the boy.

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