Use The Idiom Like A Fish Out Of Water In A Sentence
Roseline Dyba
Honestly I've only ever heard like a fish out of water used to describe someone who's not comfortable in a situation. I suppose you could use the opposite and hope people understand the contrast you're making, but "a fish in water" is the normal, usual, non-notable state of things, so it might not be clear what you're implying.
Like a duck takes to water is a well known idiom, and has references in appropriate reference materials (e.g. books on idioms). Here, that and more duck idioms are discussed. As you've stated, it means easily.
I am a non-native speaker and I frequently hear such idiomatic constructions.Probably, the writer assumed that since both duck and fish take to water equally, they could be interchanged.
It seems to me more likely that the intended fish/water reference above is to the expression "like a fish in water," as in this quotation from a letter by Daniel Baker, from Port Lavaca, Texas, on June 26, 1848, reprinted in The Life and Labours of the Rev. Daniel Baker D.D.: Pastor and Evangelist (1858):
Aside from a healthy dose of luck, a well-rounded education on aquatic insects is the most valuable piece of tackle for any fly fisher. Certainly a witless angler with a $1,000 fly rod might get lucky and catch a fish or two just out of sheer persistence, but a fly fisher with an old Fenwick Fenglass from the 70s and a studied understanding of how trout eat will always put more fish in the net.
Trout expend the energy to stay near the surface and eat these bugs because the payoff is worth it. During a spinner fall, the calories a trout can intake can greatly exceed what it expends by swimming against the current at the surface (which is significantly stronger than the current elsewhere in the water column).
However, in the case of a good stonefly hatch, or if there are any terrestrials on the water, big fish will often hit those bugs hard. That behavior can cause the same splashy sounds you hear when smaller fish are eating.
As anglers, we all know that fishing truisms like leaky waders, wind knots, and blown fish can gnaw at us between casts. But sometimes, a yang of brilliant light shines... view blog post More Blog Posts Water, water everywhere Atlantic salmon are in trouble From the Archives One year. One rod. One reel. One fly. Hope, optimism and fly fishing in a post-Jimmy Buffett world PHOTOGRAPHY Latest Photography Words: Todd Tanner. Images: Tim Romano and Jeremy Roberts.
In English there are a number of idioms using the word water. As I hope you know, water's very important: we use it for drinking, washing and splashing about in. Most importantly, it's used to make the ice which I put in my favourite drink - whiskey. On the other hand, water's also dangerous: for example, we're careful to watch young children when they play near rivers or the sea and, of course, giant killer-sharks, like Jaws, live in water! Water idioms often highlight the dangerous or difficult side of our watery friend. Here are 10 water idioms which can help you describe difficult situations:
I am sitting in my office during a summer internship. Absorbed by my computer screen, I do not notice when my manager enters the room, much less when he starts talking. Only when a sudden hand taps my shoulder do I jump. He is gazing expectantly at me.
"Oh, right." His expression changes: to surprise, and then to caution. He proceeds to say something that looks like, "Would you graawl blub blub vhoom mwarr hreet twizzolt, please?" I haven't the faintest idea what he said. I have no excuse, for I was looking straight at him. But despite my attention, something went wrong. He spoke too fast; my eyes lost focus.
Lipreading, on which I rely for most social interaction, is an inherently tenuous mode of communication. It's essentially a skill of trying to grasp with one sense the information that was intended for another. When I watch people's lips, I am trying to learn something about sound when the eyes were not meant to hear.
Spoken words occur in my blind spot, a vacancy of my perception. But if I watch a certain way, I can bring them into enough focus to guess what they are. The brain, crafty as it is, fills in the missing information from my store of knowledge.
Do you recognize the opening of "The Night Before Christmas"? Perhaps so, because in American culture the poem is familiar enough for one to fill in the blanks through memory. Filling in the blanks is the essence of lipreading, but the ability to decipher often depends on factors outside of my control.
It is my first week as a freshman at Stanford, and I feel lost. Instead of coasting through routine interactions with people familiar to me, I have thrown myself into a place where almost nothing is predictable. I sit down at a table of strangers. One of them, I realize, is the guy from the room next to mine. "What's your name?" I ask him.
"How did you learn to lipread?" is another common query. I do not have a satisfactory answer. The truth is, I can't explain it. No more than I could explain how I learned to walk, or than anyone else could explain how she learned to hear and understand language. "Practice," I usually answer. Since I entered a mainstreamed public school in first grade, there have been no other deaf people occupying center stage in my life. My world is primarily a hearing one, and I learned to deal with this reality at a very young age. There was no reason to sign with anyone besides close friends and family, no reason to expect anyone to communicate on my terms. Surrounded by hearing people all the time, my only option has been to adapt, and lipreading is the skill that I have practiced most.
In teaching me how to make sound's shapes with my own mouth, they taught me how to focus on their faces with the deepest intensity. Like a detective-in-training, I learned to recognize consonantal stops, the subtle visual differences between a "d" and a "g." (On the other hand, "p" and "b" are all but impossible to distinguish by lipreading alone, because their only difference is that one is voiced and one is not.) I learned how to zone in on the minutest changes in the muscles of the face. Over many years of drills and refinement, I learned how to construct the appearance of functioning like a hearing person. But I did not hear: I saw.
It is the first week of first grade, and the teacher has instructed us to line up by the door so we can follow her, duckling-like, to lunch. I do not know that she has asked us to line up in alphabetical order. My interpreter, who is usually around, seems to have disappeared. Satisfied to follow the other children, I take a spot in line and wait. Only then do I realize that my peers are talking, that they are rearranging themselves. I frown when the girl in front of me says something.
When I lipread, I leave the clarity of sign language behind. I attempt to communicate with hearing people on their terms, with no expectation that they will return the favor. The standards I am striving for seem ridiculous: I am trying singlehandedly to cross the chasm of disability. Might not my stubbornness be of more harm than good?
I struggle with this. Some days I wonder what it would be like if I refused to speak. I could roll out of bed one morning, decide to take control of my communication on my terms, and make everyone write it down or sign, as other Deaf people do. Some days I resent myself. I wonder if I am weak, ashamed or overly anxious to please.
I am 12 and at a summer camp for the deaf. The entire group has just gone whitewater rafting and is stopping to get ice cream. My peers line up by the counter, signing to each other about the flavors they want. I smile and join, finding the conversation perfectly normal. But when the clerk speaks to us, the other kids freeze like mice after the shadow of a hawk has swooped over the grass.
"I said, would you like a free sample?" the attendant says. I understand her and sign the message to the others. They nod, and sign which flavors they want to taste. I repeat, speaking, to the attendant.
Some people are all but impossible for me to lipread. People with thin lips; people who mumble; people who speak from the back of their throats; people with dead-fish, unexpressive faces; people who talk too fast; people who laugh a lot; tired people who slur their words; children with high, babyish voices; men with moustaches or beards; people with any sort of accent.
Accents are a visible tang on people's lips. Witnessing someone with an accent is like taking a sip of clear water only to find it tainted with something else. I startle and leap to attention. As I explore the strange taste, my brain puzzles itself trying to pinpoint exactly what it is and how I should respond. I dive into the unfamiliar contortions of the lips, trying to push my way to some intelligible meaning. Accented words pull against the gravity of my experience; like slime-glossed fish, they wriggle and leap out of my hands. Staring down at my fingers' muddy residue, my only choice is to shrug and cast out my line again.
Some people, though not inherently difficult to understand, make themselves that way. By viewing lipreading as a mysterious and complicated thing, they make the process harder. They over-enunciate, which distorts the lips like a funhouse mirror. Lips are naturally beautiful, especially when words float from them without thought; they ought never be contorted in this way. There are other signs, too: nervous gestures and exaggerated expressions, improvised sign language, a tic-like degree of smiling and nodding.
But despite its frustrations and misunderstandings, lipreading is sustenance for me. I once heard that prominent deaf educator Madan Vasishta said that he would rather have an incomplete conversation with a hearing person, one on one, than a conversation using a sign-language interpreter in which he understood everything. I take his point: The rawness of unfiltered contact surpasses even the reassurance provided by translation.
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