Phraseological Units from Greek and Roman Mythology

Language is full of possibilities to express the idea and describe the feelings more precisely. Often it is not possible to say exactly what you mean only by direct words, which are understood literally, and one should use different expressive means of stylistics like epithets, metaphors, similes, phrasal verbs and different phraseological units.

Phraseological units (Pus) outwardly look like phrases but act like words; it means that they have only one meaning for the whole phrase (8.).
e.g. to be off one’s legs;
krist vai no kājām (aiz noguruma);
cбиватсья с ног, быть без ног (от усталости).

The meaning of phraseological units is always figurative, not literal.

There are many phraseological units from Greek or Roman mythology. They are truly international and widely spread. In the translated form they can be met in most of languages, which are related to the European cultures.
e.g. Pandora’s box – Pandoras krūka,
the sword of Damocles – Damokla zobens,
Tantalus’ torture – Tantala mokas, etc.

But on the other hand, only educated people with a wide mental outlook understand them because for that it is necessary to have definite knowledge of the origin of the expression.

In my paper I will show how some of these phraseological units are originated and how they are used nowadays.…