"To grab the bull by the horns " While discussing with my French language partners on skype , a subject that often comes up, and offers the chance to improve your language fluency, is the use of idiomatic expressions . Today I thought I would try to explain the English expression "to grab the bull by the horns " Literally this means to take hold of the horns of a a male cow , to approach it head on and stop it from attacking you by holding its head away from you. In the sense of the expression , the expression means to tackle something head on , to deal with a difficult problem , to face up to a challenge and conquer it . To understand this better I will give a couple of examples of how the expression might be used in day to day life . I am at work and haven't been given a pay rise for ages . I don't think this is fair and I believe I deserve a better salary . In order to get a pay rise I need to talk to my boss and discuss it with him . Although this is difficult thing for me to do I decide to grab the bull by the horns " I go to my boss and ask for a pay rise , explaining that I think I deserve one . To give another example , for a long time I learnt French from books podcasts and the internet . I was always a little scared to take the next step of speaking face to face with someone , who would see my mistakes and my poor pronunciation . However one day " I grabbed the bull by the horns " I knew that to improve I needed real conversation practice and I started to contact native speakers on italki I hope this helps you to understand this expression better and may be able to use it in your English conversations .