Trick or treat
smell my feet
give me something
good to eat!
(Better not be stingy…)
Halloween Idioms (via EF English Live)
Many Halloween idioms have developed over time, and are used in every day conversation to illustrate a point.
To have one’s blood run cold means to experience a frightening or disturbing event, and to create that unpleasant, shivery feeling and sense of our stomach falling that occurs when we have a shock.
To dig one’s grave is a way of expressing that we have made a bad mistake.
In cold blood is a way of expressing that an action, often a bad one, was carried with complete knowledge of the consequences.
Like a bat out of hell is not just a hard rock hit by the singer Meatloaf, but means to move very quickly.
Playing devil’s advocate means to present the other side of an argument even though you do not personally support it.
Skeleton staff is a minimal amount of workers needed, and to be stabbed in the back is to be betrayed by a friend or colleague. This phrase most probably comes from Julius Caesar, a Shakespearean tragedy. Indeed, the Bard (Shakespeare) was extremely fond of using the supernatural or spirit world in his works, most famously Macbeth, where witches dictate the murder of the king. In fact, Shakespeare was quite brave to pen that particular play, since it followed the Gunpowder Plot, where plotters sought to blow up Parliament and kill the king, and which took place just a few days after Halloween.
A witch hunt means to unfairly seek to damage others, perhaps because of a false view of their beliefs and at death’s door is a slightly sarcastic way of suggesting somebody is not as ill as they are making out.
metaphraze 