Learning English makes me happy. For me, learning English idioms, just like Chinese idioms, is very interesting. Idioms are a group of words whose meaning is not deduced from individual words. It is difficult to memorize an English idiom directly, but learning the story behind it is very easy and interesting.

    A good example is “a lick and a promise.” This idiom comes from a lazy British cat that didn’t lick its whole body every day to keep clean and tidy, unlike other cats. Many cats told him to lick himself more, but he only licked his face. After many talks, the cat finally agreed to lick his whole body and promised to keep himself clean. However, when he did this, he never thoroughly cleaned his body elaborately. Instead, he was always careless, and he only did it perfunctorily. Thus the idiom “a lick and a promise” means “to do things perfunctorily” and is used widely by people later in life.

    It is interesting to memorize an idiom like this, isn’t it? Will you be able to remember this idiom? Let’s discover the stories behind English idioms together and learn them happily. Come on.