Italian Idioms - Italian idiomatic expressions

Languages are brimful of typical expressions called "Idioms".

People who speak Italian (or whatever other language) use idioms in their everyday conversations.

Therefore, these expressions are indispensable if you want to learn a language, but a non-native speaker will find them pretty illogical and hard to learn, because their specific meaning doesn't correspond to their literal one.

There is oftentimes no way of supposing the meaning of an idiom merely by looking at the single words it contains.

However, don't worry, because I'm going to write each Italian idiomatic expression together with its literal English translation, its equivalent English idiom and its idiomatic meaning, so that you can learn easily.

Example:

Fare i salti mortali
Literal translation:	To make mortal jumps
Equivalent English idiom:	To bend over backwards

Meaning: To make an extraordinary effort to do something.

From now on, I'm going to add, bit by bit, many Italian idioms to this page.

To start, here there are the first six of them:

A	Literal translation .. .....	Equivalent English idiom
Acqua in bocca!	Water in the mouth!	Mum's the word
Meaning: keep quite, not to say anything.
Acqua passata	Past water	Water under the bridge
Meaning: something belongs to the past and isn't important or disturbing any more.

E

Essere al verde	To be at the green	To be broke
Meaning: to have no money; not to have enough money. Examples

F

Fare passi da gigante	to make giant steps	to progress by leaps and bounds
Meaning: to make extraordinary progress in a short period of time. Examples

M

Mettere il bastone tra/fra le ruote	To put the stick between the wheels	To throw a monkey wrench (or spanner) in the works
Meaning: to hinder the carrying out of an activity or plan. Examples

P

Perdere le staffe

To lose the stirrups

To fly off the handle

Meaning:

To lose self-control by getting extremely angry.

Examples

That's all; arrivederci!