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by Kate Woodford

Today I’m looking at idioms and expressions from a range of national newspapers that were published on the same day. I do this every few months as a way of providing you with up-to-date, frequently used idioms.

One newspaper reports on the recent challenges to the UK Prime Minister’s authority, saying that he will need ‘nerves of steel’ to defeat his opponents. If you have nerves of steel, you are very brave and remain calm and strong in stressful or dangerous situations. In the money section of the same paper, a journalist advises readers on how to ‘make the most’ of a financial adviser. To make the most of something or someone that offers benefits is to take full advantage of them.

The sports pages of the same paper focus on a football manager who they think will be offered the job of managing one of the UK’s biggest teams. They warn the manager that this job is a ‘poisoned chalice’ and advise him to ‘bide his time’ and see what other opportunities arise. A poisoned chalice is a situation that seems very good at first, but which soon causes problems and harm, and if you bide your time, you wait patiently for the best time to do something.

Moving on, another tabloid claims that a politician who had intended to challenge the Prime Minister’s leadership has now ‘bottled it’. In UK English, if you bottle it, you find you don’t have the courage to do something that you intended to do. It’s an informal phrase. Another way of saying this is lose your nerve.

A sports journalist describes how a goalkeeper who was substituted for another player after making two terrible mistakes ‘looked for all the world’ as if he would never play again for the team. If someone looks, sounds or seems for all the world as if or like something, they look, sound, etc. exactly like that. Another article on the same page sympathizes with an injured player who has been ‘on the sidelines’ for six months. If you are on the sidelines or do something from the sidelines, you are not actively involved in something.

The news pages of a broadsheet claim that the UK’s Prime Minister is ‘hanging on by his fingernails’ but that he has ‘thrown down the gauntlet’ to his rivals. Someone who is hanging on by their fingernails/fingertips is only just managing to keep their position, and a person who throws down the gauntlet invites someone to fight or compete with them.

Finally, in the sports pages of the broadsheet, a team is urged to ‘take the game to’ the champions in their forthcoming match against them, but notes that they will ‘have their work cut out’ to do so. An athlete or team that takes their game to an opponent plays aggressively in order to gain an advantage. If you have your work cut out to achieve something, it will be difficult.

That concludes my latest round-up of newspaper idioms. I’ll be back in a couple of months with another of these.