Englishheart to heart
Meaning: Serious and intimate.
Example: “It's time we had a heart to heart about your future.”
Origin: The construction is doing as much work as the noun. English uses an X-to-X frame — face to face, man to man, eye to eye, hand to hand — to mark contact that is direct, symmetrical, and stripped of intermediaries, and every member of the family implies the removal of something that would normally sit in between. A heart-to-heart therefore specifies more than sincerity: it claims the conversation has bypassed the ordinary social layer of manners, position, and self-presentation that governs most talk, with each party addressing the other from the seat of feeling rather than from a role. The phrase is attested in English from the 1800s, and the reason it usually needs to be announced in advance is that the bypass it describes does not happen by default.
More English idioms
- keep one's head above water To just barely manage, especially financially or with one's workload.
- keep one's nose to the grindstone To work hard without rest.
- knee-high to a grasshopper Very young.
- laugh all the way to the bank To be proved right or successful in the face of scorn, particularly as regards money.
- lead someone around by the nose To dominate someone; to force someone to do something.
- lend someone an ear To listen to someone.
Explore another collection: Untranslatable Words
Words that capture a feeling or idea English needs a whole sentence for.
- Puente The day taken off to 'bridge' a midweek public holiday to the weekend, turning it into a…
- Vergüenza ajena The squirming embarrassment felt on behalf of another person, who may be entirely untroub…
- Magari One word doing the work of 'if only', 'I wish', 'perhaps' and 'you bet' — the tone decide…
Keep exploring