Learning with the nettle The other day while I was reading a book in English, I met an expression I didn't know "Grasp the nettle". First I searched for nettle and I discovered that it is a stinging

Paola

Learning with the nettle The other day while I was reading a book in English, I met an expression I didn't know "Grasp the nettle". First I searched for nettle and I discovered that it is a stinging plant known in Italian as ortica. Second I searched for the expression "grasp the nettle" and I found out with surprise that it means to face problems with bravery. My surprise comes from the fact that even in Italian ortica is used in a idiomatic expression "gettare alle ortiche" but the meaning is complete differet. Indeed it means wasting something precious (energy, experience, time) in something useless. At this point I became curious to know how this Italian expression is translated in English and so I found out two other expressions that can translate the Italian expression "Throw out of the window" and "Throw to the winds". To sum up thanks to nettle now I know three more English expressions: who would have known that from a stinging plant comes so much knowledge!

Sep 5, 2015 7:51 AM

Corrections · 3

Learning with the nettle

The other day while I was reading a book in English, I met came across an expression I didn't know "Grasp the nettle".
First I searched for nettle and I discovered that it is a stinging plant known in Italian as ortica.
Second I searched for the expression "grasp the nettle" and I found out with surprise was surprised to find out that it means to face problems with bravery.

My surprise comes from the fact that even in Italian ortica is used in a idiomatic expression "gettare alle ortiche" but the meaning is complete different. Indeed it means wasting something precious (energy, experience, time) ion something useless. At this point I became curious to know how this Italian expression is translated in English and so I found out two other expressions that can translate the Italian expression "Throw out of the window" and "Throw to the winds".
To sum up thanks to nettle now I know three more English expressions: who would have known that from a stinging plant comes so much knowledge!

Paola - good work. Just a few small errors that I have corrected - I am not quite sure about what you mean by the two other expressions. Do you mean you found two Italian expressions that have English equivalents that are unrelated to 'nettles'?

September 5, 2015

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