David Czech
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2012
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Czech
- Home Country
- Czech Republic
- Current Location
- Czech Republic
Hello,
I would like to ask native speakers a question about an idiom I found in Isaac Bashevis Singer´s "The Riddle": "to promise the sun and the moon" ("He promised her the sun and the moon, her own theatre, a Hollywood role. What a bluffer!"), in The Free Dictionary (on-line) I often use when learning English (Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary) I see, however, just a shorter form "to promise the moon to someone" or "to promise someone the moon" (I don´t have, I confess, my "paper" dictionary of idioms at hand right now).
Does the longer form sound as natural as the shorter (and probably more common: judging just according to simple Google occurrances, not to corpora) one?
Thanks
David
I would like to ask native speakers a question about an idiom I found in Isaac Bashevis Singer´s "The Riddle": "to promise the sun and the moon" ("He promised her the sun and the moon, her own theatre, a Hollywood role. What a bluffer!"), in The Free Dictionary (on-line) I often use when learning English (Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary) I see, however, just a shorter form "to promise the moon to someone" or "to promise someone the moon" (I don´t have, I confess, my "paper" dictionary of idioms at hand right now).
Does the longer form sound as natural as the shorter (and probably more common: judging just according to simple Google occurrances, not to corpora) one?
Thanks
David