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Reader question: Please explain sentence: “Idioms are a common stumbling block for learners of a foreign language.” Stumbling block? My comments: How true. Stumbling block, an idiom in its own right, is the problem here. An idiom, by definition, is a group of words with a meaning of its own that is different from the meanings of each word put together. In other words, you can not always guess out an idiom’s meaning by reading the words individually. Idioms are often shortened versions of a longer expression. Originally, for example, someone makes the remark that it’s the last bundle of straw that breaks the back of the camel. People hear it and they like it. So they repeat it to others. After a time, usually a long period of time, all people seem to be able to use and understand this expression. Then people begin to shorten the expression for economy and convenience. So, today, we simply have the “last straw”. Simple as that. Not so simple, of course, for the foreign student. Not initially at any rate. When the foreign student reads “stumbling block”, he may first take it as meaning a block that stumbles. After a while, having come across this term many times in different contexts, he realizes it’s not the block, which may be a rather large rock blocking your way in the street, that stumbles, but it is the person who tries to step over the rock that stumbles. | 
