---
title: 'More idioms!'
url: 'https://graker.ru/en/news/2026/06/10/more-idioms'
language: en
type: post
author: 'Roman Grachev'
published: '2026-06-10T02:10:00+03:00'
updated: '2026-10-25T14:27:14+03:00'
categories:
  - English
translations:
  ru: 'https://graker.ru/news/2026/06/10/more-idioms.md'
---

# More idioms!

And here I am again with English idioms. This time without long funny stories, but several at once! Here goes:

**Don't drink the water!** — a fairly popular parting word to a traveler. When I was translating the [Conchords](https://graker.ru/project/flight_of_the_conchords), this phrase ate my whole brain. It turned out to be advice not to drink tap water far from home. Because a tourist's metabolism may not cope with a different bacterial background and the composition of water from a foreign water supply.

**Donkey's years** — a half-joking expression meaning a long, long time. Years as long as a (living) donkey's ears. Long ago the English simply said *donkey's ears* — also about a period of time as long as a donkey's ears. But in a number of accents ears and years sounded very similar, and over time the expression turned into *donkey's years*.

**Rain check** — a very popular idiom, usually rendered in Russian as "let's do it another time?" The meaning is very close, but there's a nuance. A *rain check* is a kind of "rain ticket". They were given to people who came to a sports match that had to be cancelled and rescheduled due to bad weather. With a rain check you could get into the rescheduled event. So the idiom carries not just an abstract "let's put it off till some day, maybe", but a quite specific "not now, but we'll keep the option".

**K9** — as a kid I, like many, thought that in the Belushi film "K-9" "K9" was some kind of special police unit code. When I grew up, while watching films in English I suddenly discovered that it's actually a homophone. That is, K9 simply sounds like something else. If you don't know yet, guess for yourself what :)