From Wellcome Images
Continuing Glossophilia’s 10-part series on bodily expressions.
We’ve gathered all the phrases and expressions we can possibly think of that make use of bodily parts in all their glory — and divided them into ten broad categories* descending from head to toe (and then some …). We’ve left out one- and two-word euphemistic adjectives and tried to avoid expressions that refer too literally to our actual limbs, organs or orifices; what follows are phrases that tend towards the metaphorical and poetic, even though some can also be taken more literally.
Here we have phrases using chests, breasts, and the heart — that organ of multiple emotions and the home in which it beats. Up next: arms and hands, fingers and thumbs.
Chest:
1. To get something off one’s chest
2. To play one’s cards close to one’s chest
3. To put hair on someone’s chest
4. To take the spear in one’s chest
Breast:
- To make a clean breast of something
2. To bear your breast to someone
3. To beat one’s breast about something
Heart:
1. To learn by heart / to know by heart
2. Eat your heart out
3. A man after my own heart
4. My heart isn’t in it
5. Warm the cockles of my heart
6. Have a heart
7. To wear my heart on my sleeve
8. A bleeding heart
9. To die of a broken heart
10. From the heart
11. To find it in your heart
12. To get to the heart of something
13. To have one’s heart in one’s boots
14. My heart missed/skipped a beat
15. My heart sank
16. With a heavy heart
17. To lose one’s heart to
18. To lose heart
19. To not have the heart to do something
20. To have one’s heart set against something
21. To have one’s heart set on something
22. To put one’s heart and soul into something
23. To steal someone’s heart
24. To take something to heart
25. To his heart’s content
26. To have a change of heart
27. Absence makes the heart grow fonder
28. Cross my heart (and hope to die)
29. Emptier than a banker’s heart
30. To harden one’s heart
31. To have a heart-to-heart
32. To open one’s heart to
32. My heart goes out to you
33. To have your heart in your mouth
34. Home is where the heart is
35. It’s breaking my heart
36. It’s tearing my heart out
36. Out of the goodness of my heart
37. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over
38. To have a heart of gold
39. To follow one’s heart
40. To have someone’s best interests at heart
41. My heart stood still
42. His heart is in the right place
43. To cry one’s heart out
44. From the bottom of my heart
45. With half a heart
46. With all his heart
47. She has a heart of gold
48. He has a heart of stone
48. It/he is near/dear to my heart
49. She poured her heart out
50. To steel one’s heart against
51. To take heart from something
52. A heavy purse makes a light heart
53. To be faint of heart
54. Home is where the heart is
55. In my heart of hearts
56. To let your heart rule your head
57. Young at heart
58. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach
*****
* Categories:
I: Hair, heads & brains
II: Eyes & ears
III: Faces, noses & mouths, teeth, cheeks & chins
IV: Necks, throats & shoulders
V: Chests, breasts & hearts
VI: Arms & hands, fingers & thumbs
VII: Bellies & bottoms, hips, loins & backs
VIII: Legs, feet, toes & heels
IX: Blood, sweat & tears, skin & bones, nerves, muscles
X: Bodies & skeletons