Arriving at a New Meaning
Some examples of interesting Spanish idioms can be found in our lesson on the verb llegar.
Two of the colorful ones are no llegar la sangre al río (which, if literally translated would mean "the blood not arriving at the river") and no llegar a la suela del zapato (which, if translated word for word, would mean "to not reach the sole of the shoe"). Without reading further, can you guess what those phrases mean?
The phrase no llegar la sangre al río, according to the word-origins site ide3.com, goes back to the days when battles were often fought near rivers. When the blood reached the town, the people there would assume that bad things had happened. So the phrase has come to mean "to not have bad consequences."
The phrase no llegar a la suela del zapato a can best be translated by an English idiom, one that wouldn't make much sense if you were learning English as a second language: "to hold a candle (to)." You may hear the phrase used in insults, kind of like saying, "You're such a runt, you can't even reach the role of my shoe."
If you're interested in idioms, you can learn more in lessons about idioms using tener and idioms using haber.
Comments
Dear Mr. Erikson:
I have been enjoying your lessons for the last year but in the last month I have been very frustrated in reading the lesson and having the flashing “you are the 999,999 person” message. It is very distracting and I have to stop reading because of it. I realize that you probably gain revenue from this message but I have paid for other programs eg. LOma that are much more user friendly to the eyes.
Thank you and hope there are other users that are as unhappy as I am with this “flashing” message.
Katy
I have never had such a flashing message come up nor any other. I don’t think my global location has anything to do with it (I am in Spain).
Also, I am quite certain that any messages of any type are because about.com allows it and if anyone is making revenue it is them and never the guides.
I do know what you mean, it is very annoying when I run across this elsewhere. But you can click on the ‘x’ to remove it. Unfortunately, it is usally very small and hidden somewhere. If this does not work, I would complain to about.com and also look into a ‘pop-up’ blocker.
Just my two centimes ;>D
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