1. Tongue in cheek
Meaning - To pretend to be serious while joking
Origin - Probably came from the practice of biting one's tongue to suppress either a smile or outright laughter.
2. Pushing the envelope
Meaning - To approach or exceed known performance boundaries.
Origin - This expression came from the USAF test pilot program of the late 1940's. It meant flying an aircraft at or beyond its known performance envelope or recommended limits.
3. Fit to be tied
Meaning - To be furious.
Origin - This refers to the practice of bounding uncontrollable, dangerous people into strait-jackets.
4. Wing and a prayer
Meaning - Hopeful but unlikely to succeed.
Origin - An expression from the First World War. From an American Flyer who returned safely despite a badly damaged wing - he had been praying throughout, he said.
5. Pass the buck
Meaning - Pass off responsibility to someone else.
Origin - A marker known as a buck is used in card games to mark the player who is the current dealer. When the buck is passed to the next player, the responsibility for dealing is passed.
6. The buck stops here
Meaning - To take responsibility for something.
Origin - This expression is the opposite of the previous phrase "Pass the buck".
7. Stink to high heaven
Meaning - To have a very strong odor.
Origin - This expression probably originated from the well-known Shakespearean play 'Hamlet'. From a dialogue uttered by Hamlet's Uncle, the King of Denmark - "O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon it, A brother's murder."
8. Ducks in a row
Meaning - To have things in order.
Origin - This expression arises from the tidy habit that baby ducklings have of swimming in a straight row behind their mother.
9. Hell's half acre
Meaning - A long and frustrating trip.
Origin - This expression originates from the place in Idaho that is known as Hell's half acre that is a lava flow and has an irregular, surreal-looking terrain that is no picnic to navigate.
10. Face the music
Meaning - To accept the truth.
Origin - Originates from the British Military practice of playing the drums when someone was court marshaled.
11. Egg on your face
Meaning - To be embarrassed.
Origin - Yellow egg shows up vividly well on your face if you don't wipe your mouth after eating, and, unless you're really thick-skinned, that's embarrassing.
12. Sell yourself short
Meaning - Having a woeful amount of confidence in oneself.
Origin - This expression comes from short selling of stocks in the belief that their value is going down.
13. Crocodile tears
Meaning - Phony tears, usually shed to manipulate or exploit.
Origin - Sunning crocodiles often keep their mouths wide open and this pressurizes the tear glands to shed tears. It is thought that these fake tears - not produced from any emotional response - help in digesting the meal.
14. Sitting duck
Meaning - Vulnerable, easy prey.
Origin - A duck resting on the ground is easier to shoot than one that happens to be flying away.
15. Flash in the pan
Meaning - A thing of great promise that doesn't live up to expectations.
Origin - This expression comes from the Gold Rush days when prospectors glimpsed a flash of gold in their pan, but it actually came to nothing.
16. Albatross around your neck
Meaning - Weighed down by a past misdeed or deep shame.
Origin - This expression comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". The captain in the poem killed an albatross (a symbol of good luck) and this was thought to be the reason for the wind dropping and the ship being rendered motionless.
17. Roll with the punches
Meaning - To brave through the hard times.
Origin - This is a boxing term - it means deflecting a direct hit.
18. When the chips are down
Meaning - Bleak times.
Origin - This is a gambling expression. Chips are used for money - if you're winning, you have a lot of them; if you're down on your luck, you don't have many.
19. Between a rock and a hard place
Meaning - Not left with any good choices.
Origin - This expression arises from the Greek Classics. Odysseus had to pass between the monster Scylla and the deadly whirlpool Charydbis.
20. I'll be a monkey's uncle
Meaning - Get off, it can't be true, I can't believe it, how can it be true?
Origin - We must blame Darwin for this one. Or rather the non-believers in his theory.
Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls
Voltaire
In the simplest form, poetry can be defined as a form of literature containing an expression of feelings, emotions or experiences. One of the greatest distinction of poetry from prose is that poetry is written in metrical form. We often read a poem but do not know that it belongs to a particular poetic genre. Let us know more about the all different types of poems.
Types Of Poems
Acrostic: The word acrostic literally means a puzzle where you fill a square grid with words reading the same down as across. An acrostic poem is defined as a verse where the first letters (alphabets) of every line when read down form a single word or a message.
e.g- JACK
Jovial
Adorable
Cute
Kind
Ballad: Ballad is one of the most popular types of poems that tells a story. It is narrative and often contains recurrent refrain. Today Ballads are often misinterpreted as love songs.
e.g- Ballad of Semmerwater (Sir William Watson) or the Ballad of Father Gilligan (W. B. Yeats).
Blank Verse: This is a poetry form without a rhyme but containing a specific meter, i.e iambic pentameter.
e.g- All the verses in Shakespearean plays.
Burlesque: It is a type of poem where a serious subject is treated in a humorous, impudent and exaggerated manner. Burlesque is most used as theatrical entertainment.
e.g- Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Canzone: The word Canzone means song in Italian. It is a Italian type of poem like a lyric, containing 5-6 stanzas. Canzone often has a short concluding stanza.
e.g- Sonnet XIII by Petrarch
Cinquain: A Cinquain is a poem of 5 lines of varied length and rhyme. The distinct feature of a Cinquain is that the first line consists of 1 word, the second of 2 words and so on.
Couplet: Couplet is a type of poem that contains only two lines that have rhyming words. Couplet is one of the terms of poetry.
e.g- Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest
Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest.
(Alexander Pope)
Diamante Poem: This is one of the less popular types of poems. It consists of 7 lines structured in a specific manner. The first and the last line consists of only word; the second and the sixth line of 2 words; the third and the fifth line consists of 3 words; while the middle line contains four words. The verses of this poem resemble a diamond.
Elegy: An elegy is a sad and melancholic poem, usually about the death of an individual. Funeral poems or elegy is one of the most popular formats used in funeral and memorial services today.
e.g- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)
Epic: An epic is a very long poem that contains story of the life of a heroic figure or a mythological character. Epic is a very old form of poetry.
e.g- Iliad, Odyssey (Homer), Mahabharata (Veda Vyaas) and Ramayana.
Free Verse: It is a type of poem that may or may not have a specific rhyme scheme or meter. The poet has a freedom to make use of any poetic devices in the poem.
e.g- Prometheus (Goethe)
Ghazal: It is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian and Urdu literature. A single Ghazal has 5-15 rhyming couplets that are usually based on the theme of love or divinity. The closing couplet often has the poet's signature.
e.g- Mirza Ghalib was a popular Ghazal poet.
Haiku: It is a Japanese type of poem containing three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively that are not rhymed. Haiku poems also contain a cutting word (kireji) and a season word (kigo).
e.g- Poems of Matsuo BashÅ
Idyll Poem: It is a short poem that describes pastoral life in idealized terms. It can also be a poem that tells a story about ancient heroes.
e.g- The Solitary Reaper (William Wordsworth)
Jintishi: It is a type of Chinese poem based on the four traditional tones. It generally has 8 lines that are in the form of 4 couplets. These poems are based on a variety of themes and subjects.
e.g- Du Fu was a famous poet who wrote Jintishi poems.
Lay: It is a long and narrative poem consisting of frequent refrains.
Limerick: A limerick is a form of poem that is humorous and witty and even obscene at times. It consists of a strict rhyme scheme.
e.g- Book of Nonsense (Edward Lear)
Lyric: It is a type of poem that resembles a song where the poet expresses his feelings and emotions, directly to the reader.
e.g- If (Rudyard Kipling)
Minnesang: It is a type of song that originated in Germany around 12th century. The theme or the subject of this poetry is love.
Narrative Poetry: A narrative is long and complex poem that has a plot or a story. There is a regular pattern of rhyme in this type of poem. Ballad, Idyll and epic are the different types of poems that fall in the category of narrative poetry.
e.g- Idylls of the King (Tennyson)
Ode: An Ode is a type of poem that is similar to lyric, but is serious and thoughtful. It is in the form of verses that are framed in three parts.
e.g- Ode to the West Wind (P.B. Shelley)
Pantoum: This poem type is similar to villanelle and it follow a specific pattern. The second and the fourth line of each stanza is repeated as the first and third line of the next stanza.
Pastourelle: It is a type of poem that usually depicts the life and romance of shepherds. It is an old French type of poem and is also known as pastoral poem.
Ruba'i: Ruba'i is a quatrain or a four line poem. This poem type is popularized by Arabian and Persian poets.
e.g- Omar Khayyam's poems.
Rondeau: It is one of the French poem types consisting of 13-15 lines. The significant features of this poem include presence of only 2 rhymes and repetition of first line as refrain.
Satirical Poetry: It is a type of poem that uses satire to mock injustice or any political issues.
e.g- Juvenal's Satires.
Sestina (Sestine): This is a type of poem with 6 stanzas. The lines are not rhymed but the end word of every line in the first stanza appears in other stanzas.
e.g- Ye Goat-Herd Gods (Philip Sidney)
Sijo: It is a Korean type of poem like a lyric of 3 lines. It has a pause after every line.
Sonnet: In simple terms, a sonnet can be defined as a poem of 14 lines. Sonnets are further divided as Shakespearean sonnets (3 quatrains and 1 couplet) and Italian sonnets (2 quatrains and a sestet)
e.g- Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Shakespeare)
Stave (Stev): It is a lyric like poetry from Scandinavia that usually has stanzas of four lines and one stressed syllable.
Tanka: It is a Japanese type of poem of 5 lines. The first and the third line of Tanka has 5 syllables whereas the rest 3 lines have 7 syllables.
e.g- To live is to break (Ueda Miyoji)
Villanelle: This is a 19 line poem having 5 triplets and a quatrain. There are refrains used in the initial stanza and again at the end of the quatrain.
e.g- Do not go gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas)
