Thread: an idiom

I've once met the idiom, in David G. Brin I think - "the act of kicking the sofa". Still curious - what might it mean?

You came across an idiom, that is. It's hard to say what it means without the context you saw it in, but I'm guessing it means here "to die."

hmm 'kick the bucket' is die in British idiom .. kick the sofa doesn't have the same ring to it. Perhaps it's the middle class version

"Kick the bucket" is an American idiom for "die" as well, so I was just guessing the writer was trying to put a new humorous spin on it, or something.

I think that it is not an idiom at all. It should be understood literally as a description of aome stupid behavior. This alien guy's daughter was doing something she was not supposed to do. It was just as stupid (from his point of view) as kicking a sofa would be for a human girl.

Aliens? You see how important context is when you ask people to explain things, greubau?

Well, somewhy it was looking very like an idiom to me, like those having pretty common meaning in some areas... There was another megabyte of things like this, but I endured Thing in question is from the Brin's "The Uplift War", somewhere near the beginning. The whole thing is somewhat interesting, but gets extremely trendy near the end. Although maybe I am too picky after reading A.Gromov's 1001 mogicans .

This one intrigued me and through the magic of the internet, I was able to quickly locate the whole passage. I think in this context it simply means "kicking the sofa" as in someone kicking the sofa . . . no idiomatic intent at all. This passage is pretty strange; reminds me of why I rarely read SciFi. Can't be the best of places to learn English . . .

"Tendrils wafted alongside her head, ungentle in their agitation. Athaclena let her frustration and anger fizz like static electricity at the tips of the silvery strands. Their ends waved as if of their own accord, like slender fingers, shaping her almost palpable resentment into something...
Nearby, one of the humans awaiting an audience with the Planetary Coordinator sniffed the air and looked around, puzzled. He moved away from Athaclena, without quite knowing why he felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. He was probably a natural, if primitive, empath. Some men and women were able vaguely to kenn Tymbrimi empathy-glyphs, though few ever had the training to interpret anything more than vague emotions.
Someone else also noticed what Athaclena was doing. Across the public room, standing amid a small crowd of humans, her father lifted his head suddenly. His own corona of tendrils remained smooth and undisturbed, but Uthacalthing cocked his head and turned slightly to regard her, his expression both quizzical and slightly amused.
It might have been similar if a human parent had caught his daughter in the act of kicking the sofa, or muttering to herself sullenly. The frustration at the core was very nearly the same, except that Athaclena expressed it through her Tymbrimi aura rather than an outward tantrum. At her father's glance she hurriedly drew back her waving tendrils and wiped away the ugly sense-glyph she had been crafting overhead."

Well it's not quite so that I am trying to learn the language this way. In fact, I am the kind of freak that believes that any literary creation of worth should be read in its original language, most preferrably.

Besides, two books from the second Uplift trilogy has not yet been translated into Russian, so I've tried to get used to that what is inevitable.

It was not an idiom, not a standard piece of english speech. The author just described an absurd occurrence. His point was that a parent who saw a child kicking the sofa or muttering to themselves would consider it to be odd and a reason for a slight concern about the child's well-being.

The key to the meaning of "kicking the sofa" is the word "frustration" in the following sentence.

An angry, frustrated teenager takes it out on the furniture -- and so, kicks the sofa.

The character was full of frustration -- he wanted to hit or kick something.

"outward tantrum" -- like, kicking a sofa

Before the last two posts pointing out the context, I got lost in the myriad of wordiness beforehand.(which I liked).

Originally Posted by TexasMark

It might have been similar if a human parent had caught his daughter in the act of kicking the sofa

So, missing the context, I thought this phrase was just another of the millions of sexual connotations out there.ie. the parents caught their daughter on her back, having sex.