Idioms have to be learned by everyone.

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Sorry I can't contribute, I've got a lot on my plate.

Your eyes are bigger than your belly!

My problem is I can never remember the meaning of an idiom I only read or hear once in a blue moon (haha I used an idiom). My best strategy is to look up the etymology. If I can remember the etymology I can remember the meaning much more easily. The literal meanings of a lot of idioms are so archaic as to be virtually cryptic in modern usage. Idioms that have come into use in more recent times are usually easier to understand.

I can learn idioms just like anyone else can, even when I was a child. If I am unfamiliar with an idiom, I can still suspect an idiom because it's obvious, but I may ask what it means if I have never heard of it before.

I remember a few years ago when my NT cousins had never heard the idiom ''you're pulling my leg'', and when I used it (when whining about how some person was making me feel on facebook), my cousins laughed and said, ''what? How is he pulling your leg? What the hell?'' And I had to say, ''pulling my leg means he's teasing me'', and my cousins were like, ''ohh, right'' and stated that they never heard that saying before. So even NTs need to learn just like anybody else, and my cousins were 19 and 20 at the time. I don't remember learning the saying ''you're pulling my leg'' myself, but I have known what it means for years so I must have picked it up somewhere during my childhood, just like most of the other sayings I have heard of.

I remember when I was first diagnosed, adults used to keep using idioms with me and thinking I wouldn't understand them just because I had ASD. It got on my nerves, and made me feel like I was stupid enough to think that ''it's raining cats and dogs'' meant real cats and dogs coming from the sky, when I knew rain was always water falling from the sky. Anyway, I've never actually heard somebody actually use that saying before when it's lashing down with rain, so any child will laugh at the saying and imagine real cats and dogs falling from the sky.

I say...Let 'em cake!

OP, I agree. But I think it's also about us not being ready for something being an idiom or metaphor in a literal conversation? Often it's just absurd so I used to laugh instead of thinking about what they meant to say...

Idioms are difficult for me to learn.
Even if I know what an idiom actually means, in my mind I'll always understand it literally at first. Then I may understand that it is an idiom. But after a few seconds.
Or I may not get it at all.

Do people understand what the phrase 'Sloppy seconds' means?

That one confused me as it's more literal than I had assumed, not less

As much as I enjoy and use idioms, I still think of their literal meaning first.

Unfortunately, I have offended people by failing to get clarification for some idioms. For example, I always thought "he's a pillow biter" meant somebody was sneaky and rude--the sort of guy who might enter your home while you are away and bite on your pillow to make it slobbery and gross. I used it several times before learning it is a homophobic slur. I felt, and feel, very sad about that. I am often tempted to use it despite knowing better, solely for the amusement of picturing my literal meaning as I say it.

This is how it is for me, although I do usually get their meaning. Idioms that are more "visual" in nature are easier for me to get. Like saying something will be as hard to find as a needle in a haystack is very easy for me to visualize. Other idioms may be much more difficult because they are less literal, concrete, or visual.

Every time I get reevaluated to see if I am still disabled, the psychologist asks me if I understand a particular idiom. The first one was "don't judge a book by its cover." The second was "Whoever lives in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." I forget what the third was. While I did give her correct answers in each case, it took me some time to get past my initial, literal, understanding and put them into words.

From what I understand, neurotypicals are better able than us to relate statements to the context in which they hear them: if there's been no mention of cake in the conversation, they'll find it fairly obvious that the phrase isn't referring to actual icing on an actual cake, and they'll figure out the associations: cake is good, icing makes it better, so "the icing on the cake" means something that makes a good thing even better, or is the finishing touch.

I understand it. It's about sex.

I was not in this conversation, but you know, some people need to have a finger in every pie

Last edited by neilson_wheels on 05 May 2013, 5:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I got stuck and had a big slice of humble pie.

Glad to hear it. Eating a humble pie is not a piece a cake