Food idioms: Phrazle Food

Idioms about food and drink

This category is full of phrases from the kitchen and the table: bread, butter, eggs, milk, cake, pie, fruit, vegetables, tea and soup, plus the people and tools around them, such as cooks, pots and baskets. The food is rarely the real subject. A cake can stand for a reward, bread for a living, an egg for a risk and a pudding for any plan that still has to be tested.

Food idioms are old and plentiful because meals were the center of daily life. Families baked their own bread, kept hens and carried eggs to market, so the risks of a dropped basket or a burned loaf were known to all. A saying that compares a problem to a kitchen mishap needs no explanation, and it sticks in the memory.

Every puzzle on this page is a food phrase. Short food words such as EGG, PIE, TEA, PEA, BREAD and CAKE are good letters to test early.

Food idioms and what they mean

None of these examples is used as a puzzle, so reading them will not spoil a game.

• The proof of the pudding is in the eating: you can only judge something by trying it. Here "proof" has its old meaning of "test", so the saying really means that the test of a pudding is eating it.
• One man's meat is another man's poison: what one person enjoys, another may dislike. It has been an English proverb since at least the 1500s.
• Half a loaf is better than no bread: a part of what you wanted is better than nothing. A version appears in John Heywood's collection of English proverbs from 1546.
• Don't cry over spilt milk: do not waste time being upset about something that cannot be undone. Once the milk is on the floor, tears will not put it back in the jug.
• Breadwinner: the person whose job pays for the family's needs. Bread has long stood for food in general, and so for a living.
• Sugarcoat: to make bad news sound better than it is. Bitter pills used to be coated with sugar so that they were easier to swallow.
• Egghead: a very intellectual person, often said with a little mockery. The picture is of a high, bald forehead; the word became popular in American politics in the 1950s.
• Butterfingers: a person who keeps dropping things, as if their hands were greased with butter. It is often shouted at a player who drops an easy catch.

Food idioms FAQ