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Grammar girl here, I'm Minyeon Fuguri.

This week I have a meaty middle about idioms that use the word pole.

A tidbit about foods that get their names from the pan in which they're cooked,

and a follow-up about dilly-dilly and dilly-dally.

We'll start with pole idioms because some of these will surprise you.

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An idiom is an expression whose meaning can't be understood literally

just by looking at the words that make it up.

For example, if you take the cake, you're not stealing pastry.

You're good at something.

If your sharp is a tack, you don't have fingers like Edward Sizzarhands.

You're really smart.

You can tell pretty easily how some idioms got started.

Moving the goalposts, for example, is an expression borrowed from football.

Giving the one-two punch came from boxing.

It's a lot less clear where other idioms came from though.

Let's look at a few that start with the word pole, and you'll see what I mean.

First, there's to pull the plug on something.

This means to end something often abruptly.

For example, you might pull the plug on your son's sleep over

if you learned he and his friends were teaping the neighbor's yard.

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