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rries meanings, which cannot be deduced from their individual components. More often than not, it cannot be interpreted only according to its literal meaning. Take the expression “to go Dutch (with someone)” for example: Instead of going to the Netherlands (Holland), it means to agree to share the cost of something (with someone), as in “Will you let me take you out to dinner tonight? “As long as we go Dutch”. Take another Chinese idiom for example: “胸有成竹”(literally means to have the bamboo in one’s mind, figuratively, to have ready plans or design in one’s mind. cf. to have a card up one’s sleeve). An idiom usually acquires an implied meaning, that is to say, most idioms are metaphorical in meaning. The meaning of an idiom is somewhat more than the sum meanings of its constituent words, in other words, idioms convey more meaning as a whole than the few words could carry separately. This can be fully illustrated by the following examples: when taken literary, the phrase“the man in the street” is not an idiom. In a figurative sense, “the man in the street” implies the average person, who represents general opinion. When someone says, “You cannot unscramble the scrambled egg”, he is not merely referring to the egg, and he is using a metaphor to tell another person not to worry about something that cannot be undone. “Cat’s paw” does not refer to the paw of a cat but a person who has been fooled or exploited. “Black sheep” is not a sheep which is black at all. And it means an evil member of a herd or a good-for-nothing person. 2.2 Forms of idioms In a broad sense, idiomatic phrases cover all of the following forms: set phrases, proverbs, common sayings, colloquialisms, allusions and slangs. Here four important forms of idioms are selected for explanation. 2.2.1 Set phrases One most important group of idioms are set phrases whose form is set and many of them are rather rigid and cannot show up in any other forms. There is an inexhaustible storehouse of set phrases that play an important role in English language. I shall select one of them with cultural traces. For example, the origin of “to kick the bucket” can be traced back to a religious ceremony of baptism in Christianity. As far as a Christian is concerned, his/her important three stages, birth, marriage and death, are closely connected with a religious ceremony: baptism. A Christian needs to receive baptism from an administrator when he/she was born, get married in the church with blessings of a certain minister and be baptized again when he/she is going to die”. So the idiom “kick the bucket” is a euphemistic expression connoting “to die” referring to the death of a Christian in the ceremony of being baptized. 2.2.2 Allusions Allusions of idioms are actually origins and national characteristics of idioms. On account of the different social background, customs and religious, some idioms are sure to have allusions to myth and legend, history and classic. Their meanings are much more remoted from their literal senses. Without knowledge of the allusions made in idioms we can hardly read between the lines and catch what they imply. To understand the idioms of this kind, knowledge of the etymology of idioms is indispensable. Only a small part of English idioms, it is said, draw on sources from the legend of Greece and Rome, most of them are of biblical origin [2] p97. For example, “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh”, a phrase of biblical origin, is now metaphorically used to re