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50 Idioms About Fruits and Vegetables
50 Idioms About Fruits and Vegetables
50 Idioms About Fruits and Vegetables
Food, one of the necessities of life, figures often in traditional expressions. Fruits and vegetables,
specifically, account for some of the most familiar idioms, including the following.
Fruit
Vegetables
33–36. To be “full of beans” is to talk nonsense, and to “not know beans” is to be ignorant or
uninformed. To be “not worth a hill of beans” is to be worthless, and to “spill the beans” is to tell a
secret.
37–38. To “dangle a carrot” before someone is to encourage them with an incentive, and the
carrot in “carrot and stick” is an incentive or reward. (The stick is the punishment.)
39. A “carrot top” is a red-haired person.
40. Someone “as cool as a cucumber” is very self-possessed under pressure.
41. To “pass an olive branch” is to make peaceful or reconciliatory overtures.
42. A “pea-brained” person is stupid.
43. Fog or something else very dense can be described as being “as thick as pea soup.”
44. To be “like two peas in a pod” is to be very close with or similar to someone.
45. To be “in a pickle” is to experience complication.
46. A “couch potato” is someone who spends an excessive amount of time seated watching
television or playing video games.
47–48. A “hot potato” is a controversial or difficult issue, but to “drop (someone or something)
like a hot potato” is to abandon the person or thing.
49. Something that is “small potatoes” is insignificant.
50. “Salad days” refers to the youthful period of one’s life.
Fruits and vegetables figure occasionally in figurative references to color, such as “beet red” (the
color of embarrassment), or descriptions of specific hues, like “cherry red,” as well as other
comparisons, including “pear shaped.” The words fruit and vegetable themselves appear
occasionally in idiomatic phrases, including the following: