German Idioms and Expressions – Episode 5

water color of people pulling a church out of a village while a lady protests. Decption of the german saying "die Kirche im dorf lassen"Hello everyone,

And welcome back to a new episode of the quiz series about

German Expressions

In the last episode, we learned a bunch of expressions that are related to food. And in the episode before that, we learned a mix of expressions that had no particular overarching topic.
Wow. What a useless recap.
For real though, if you want to check out the other episodes, it’s actually not so easy right now, because I don’t have a proper quiz archive. Yet.
But the Epic Advent Calendar season is slowly but surely creeping near, so let’s see what happens.
In the meantime, you can find links to all the other quizzes in this series below this one.

But yeah, today we’ll do another serving of useful expressions, so if you’re ready to jump in, let’s jump in.

Get My Newsletter

I'll send an email whenever I post a new lesson (once per week usually).

Here’s what we’ll do:

As usual, I’ll give you the expression in German, along with a literal translation and a super generic example, that doesn’t really give you any context or hint.
And then I’ll give you three or four options for what the expression could mean.
I am trying to have all the options make sense, each with its own twisted German prezel logic.
So common sense is NOT always the key. Oh and I’m also sometimes trying to confuse you with the question, because …that’s … that’s really top tier next gen didactics, developped with the help of AI. They don’t even do it on Harvard, as far as I know. Too advanced.

Seriously though, guessing is not really the best way to learn, so that’s why for each question, there is also a hint-button. And that’ll give you an extended example WITH context, and that makes it much easier to pick the right option.
So… when you do the quiz the first time, I do recommend using the hint. And then, after a few days, try again without hint to see if you can visualize a context on your own.

And yes… unless you ace it, you should totally do the quiz at least twice, with a couple of days of a break. Because the goal is that you LEARN something, not just score some points. Or in other words:

You’re here to form, not perform.

And that’s also why, along with each answer, I’ll also give you a quick explanation WHY the expression means what it means, where it comes from and some usage advice.

Cool.
I think everything is clear, so I’d say… viel Spaß :)

 

And? How did it go? Let me know in the comments, how you did and also, how many of those you already knew and if you maybe have them in your mother tongue, as well.
And which one was your favorite, actually?
Oh and of course you’re welcome to vent your frustration if I managed to throw you off with the questions and started overthinking ;).

Please, please do the quiz again in a couple of days, and try without the hint that time, to see how much has stuck in memory.
I hope you had a fun time and found at least one expression that you want to add to your active vocabulary.
Have a great week and I’ll see you next time with scary more grammar stuff :)

 

The other expression quizzes:

 

5 9 votes
Article Rating
Emanuel

Emanuel Creator & Author

World's best teacher of German words and grammar. Full Bio →

German Grammar • Vocabulary • Etymology