Last week we began looking at the fact that in English sometimes idiomatic expressions do not follow the normal principles that govern the language.
In other words, some of these idiomatic expressions may appear incorrect in their composition because they expressions do not go according to the usual principles we know or are used to.But, as we learnt last week, idiomatic expressions are what they are: fixed in their meaning and their composition and we use them as they are — no more, no less.
If you try to ‘correct’ an idiomatic expression that seems ‘incorrect’ to you in its composition, you end up rather with an unknown expression. Last week, I gave four sentences which contained idiomatic expressions which appeared to be ‘incorrect’.
Let’s look at those sentences and see what appears to be ‘incorrect’ in each of them and why they are, after all, not ‘incorrect’.
The first sentence is:
In all situations, put your best foot forward.
The idioma
