Idiom’s Delight
When I was in Columbus recently, I met a reader that I’ve known for a long time….
For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, you might recognize her name: .
She told me that she really liked the Cealdish idiom that I put into Name of the Wind, “Don’t put a spoon in your eye over it.”
For those of you who don’t know, an idiom is a phrase that means something other than what it means. For example, when you “pull someone’s leg” you’re not *really* pulling their leg...
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for example: the dog chases the ducks - gua-gua-jiao (they quack)
but the phrase for quacking they used this time also means excellent. so you can say someone's performance is truly like dogs chasing ducks (pause) and then say the punned meaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiehouyu
i think the two examples given are sufficient to give you a sense of how they work.