tread carefully
Meaning: To act with great caution in a delicate situation.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “Tread carefully when you mention the divorce.”
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: "Tread" means to step; treading carefully avoids what lies underfoot. The phrase echoes W. B. Yeats's line "tread softly because you tread on my dreams" (1899) and is common from the 19th century.
Equivalents in other languages
- Spanish: con pies de plomo — literally: with feet of lead
More idioms — Body & Senses
- pull the other one — Said to someone telling an obvious lie.
- the heart of the matter — The most important part of an issue.
- rub salt in the wound — To make someone's pain or humiliation worse.
- tread on someone's toes — To offend someone, especially by interfering in what they see as their business.
- get under someone's feet — To be in the way while someone is trying to work.
- keep one's feet on the ground — To stay realistic and unaffected by success.
More English idioms
- make a clean break — To end something completely rather than gradually.
- a bit on the side — A secret lover; an affair.
- use someone as a cat's paw — To get someone else to do one's dirty work.
- look out for number one — To put one's own interests first.
- lose one's marbles — To go crazy.
- with only the clothes on one's back — With no possessions at all.
From our untranslatable words
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
- Flâner — To wander a city slowly and aimlessly, savouring it with no destination in mind — the art…
- Retrouvailles — The joy of reuniting with someone after a long time apart.