(Education Series: Part X – Idioms)
“Every time we use an idiom, we breathe oxygen into the worldview it came from.”
Idioms feel casual—but they’re anything but neutral. These turn-of-phrase reflexes are often energetic landmines—preloaded with assumptions about speed, force, hierarchy, competition, and dominance.
They encode masculine norms into everyday language, not just business jargon.
And every time we repeat them, we aren’t just being colloquial—we’re keeping a system alive.
🧠Why It Matters
Language isn’t just how we communicate. It’s how we think. It shapes how we:
- Frame opportunity
- Handle risk
- Respond to conflict
- Describe success
- Relate to time, control, and power
And idioms? They’re shortcuts—pre-approved expressions stamped with cultural authority. But: Whose shortcuts are they? Where did they come from? And what do they keep us blind to?
⚔️ Masculine Defaults: The Origins of Idioms
Most idioms stem from one of four highly Yang-coded domains:
- War: “Bite the bullet,” “call to arms,” “battle plan”
- Sport: “Drop the ball,” “take a shot,” “level playing field”
- Business: “Close the deal,” “bottom line,” “move the needle”
- Conquest: “Plant your flag,” “make a killing,” “rule the roost”
These idioms aren’t just masculine by chance—they reflect the systems that shaped them: action-based, results-driven, output-measured, and conquest-approved.
So when we casually say things like:
- “He really crushed it”
- “Let’s go in guns blazing”
- “Time to double down”
…we’re not just speaking. We’re submitting to a worldview.
🧰 Compare and Contrast: Idioms Reframed Through a Feminine Lens
Here’s where it gets juicy. What happens when we apply the energetic lens of The Rise of the Feminine to idioms?
Each of these shifts from a masculine “do more, win faster, own it” posture → to a feminine “feel deeper, relate wisely, honour timing” approach.
🔄 The Feminine Challenge
🌀 Try noticing your own speech patterns this week. Ask yourself:
- Do I “circle back,” or do I weave something through?
- Do I “fight fires,” or do I tend the heat?
- Am I “pushing back,” or am I holding centre?
- Do I “run something up the flagpole,” or do I invite reflection?
Masculine idioms want you to move fast, act decisively, win quickly. Feminine idioms ask you to pause, listen, hold, attune.
Neither is inherently better. But imbalance is everywhere.
🧠TROTF Insight
Masculine language isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete without its feminine counterpart.
The energy in our language creates the energy in our systems.
And if you’re wondering why your organisation feels burnt out, hyper-reactive, or perpetually in firefighting mode—maybe it’s because the language in use is wired to produce those outcomes.
Balance begins with what you say, and what you stop saying.
🪞 Final Thought
If you’re still using idioms that glorify war, speed, hustle, and domination—it’s not your fault. You were handed a script.
But scripts can be rewritten. And idioms can evolve.
All it takes is one leader who says:
“Let’s not pull the trigger just yet… Let’s wait for the pull instead.”
That’s leadership. That’s language. That’s the rise of the feminine.