Englishsweep someone off their feet
Meaning: To overwhelm someone, often causing him or her to fall in love.
Example: “He swept her off her feet with poems and surprise picnics.”
Origin: American, from around 1900, part of a small family of related phrases — "carry off one's feet" from the mid-1800s, "knock off one's feet" from the early 1900s — all built on the same idea of a sudden, overwhelming impression forceful enough to be described as physically unbalancing. "Sweep" specifically may owe something to ballroom dancing, popular in exactly this period, where a confident, skilled partner really could seem to lift and carry someone through a waltz or tango with no effort of their own. Applied to romance, the phrase captures a very particular kind of infatuation: one that arrives suddenly and leaves a person feeling like they had no say in the matter.
More English idioms
- under someone's thumb Under someone's control.
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- when hell freezes over Never.
- beat the bushes To search exhaustively.
- between the devil and the deep blue sea Facing two difficult outcomes for the same situation.
- down to earth Practical and rational; unpretentious.
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