Winning English - Mastering Idioms, Slang, and References
Count your blessings • Never take anything for granted • It's the little things that count Cornucopia • To be stuffed
Welcome to a special Thanksgiving edition of Winning English! (Although, depending on your time zone, you might be reading this on Black Friday.) Thanksgiving is a big holiday in the United States (where I live) and a few other countries around the world. Here, we celebrate by making big meals and usually visiting family.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year because it encourages us to count our blessings. Life can be extremely busy and stressful. We often think about the things we don’t have. But during Thanksgiving, we try to remember to never take anything for granted and to remember that it’s the little things that count.
“A blessing” is a divine or holy gift. The saying “to count your blessings” means that you are remembering all the ways in which you’ve been lucky or fortunate. You are adding them up - that is, counting them.
To take something “for granted” means that we don’t appreciate that the thing has been given to us freely, without our having to do anything special to earn it. The phrase “never take anything for granted” means we should remember and be thankful for the good things that have come to us in life. This saying can have a slightly different mean, too. People will sometimes say “never take anything for granted” as a warning to themselves or others to be sure to look for possible bad things to come.
“It’s the little things that count” is an idiom that means we should be thankful for the many, small good things in our lives that we tend to forget about - for example, our health, our house, the smile of a loved one, a person who held a door open for us at the store, and so on.
Now I did mention that we eat big meals at Thanksgiving. It’s usually a cornucopia of delights! Most people eat turkey and enjoy a variety of traditional side dishes and desserts. Everyone ends up stuffed!
“Cornucopia” comes from Greek mythology. It’s also known as the “horn of plenty”. In the ancient stories, it was a goat’s horn that produced an unlimited supply of food. Nowadays, it’s a basket in the shape of a horn with food in it. The cornucopia is a traditional symbol of the Thanksgiving holiday.
To be “stuffed” means that you have eaten so much food that your stomach is full and that you can’t eat anything more, although it’s likely that you’ll still try!
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