I’m having a conflict with one of my colleagues. It’s really stressing me out. We have tried everything to resolve the dispute, but nothing has worked. I’m at the end of my tether (am Rande der Verzweiflung)

A tether is a long rope tied to a post or a tree that allows an animal to move in a circle only so far from where the tether is tied.  In fact, the more common form of the idiom in the US is „at the end of your rope“. To be at the end of your tether or rope means that you can go no farther.

I was working on a project to develop a new product for one of our customers. But then our accounting department informed me that they hadn’t paid their last invoices. I also heard through the grapevine that the company was just about to go bankrupt. So I decided to put the project on the back burner (auf Eis legen), at least until they were up-to-date with their payments.

This idiom comes to us from the world of cooking. Pots and pans of food that need a lot of attention should be on one of the front burners, where they can be easily accessed. If something isn’t such a high priority, you can put it on one of the back burners, where it will be out of the way.

Our production facility is having some problems filling orders on time. At first, they were only having difficulties with highly customized orders. But now things have got worse, and even run-of-the-mill (08/15) orders are often delayed. I think some changes need to be made urgently.

This idiom is American in origin, and seems to come from the late nineteenth century. The mill was a weaving mill and the first articles called run of the mill were clothes – they came directly from the mill with no added decorations. And from this, run of the mill came to stand for something ordinary and basic.

When I got to work this morning, everyone was talking about one thing – that our head of department had quit his job and was leaving the company at the end of the month. But when he arrived at the office he explained that he was simply taking a month off to travel. It seems that there had been some Chinese whispers (stille Post) going on over the weekend!

More popular in the UK than the US, this saying derives from the name of a party game where whispered messages are passed around until a version –  totally different to the original message – comes back to the starting person.

When management met to discuss how to deal with the downturn in our company’s results, many ideas were brought to the table. But it took a long time for anyone to mention the elephant in the room (ein offensichtliches, heikles Thema, dessen Diskussion gezielt vermieden wird) – some people would have to lose their jobs.

The origins of this recent idiom (it started to appear regularly in print during the twentieth century)  are uncertain. But the image is clear – a huge elephant in a room is something that everyone can see quite clearly. So to avoid the elephant is to avoid discussing the uncomfortable topic that everyone is aware of.

My colleague and I both have to go to Frankfurt on business next week. At first she was planning to take the train, but with all the construction work on the rail lines, the trip was going to take forever. But I am driving my car down, so I told her I could give her a lift (mit dem Auto mitnehmen)

I work for one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. Our new device will be launched at the end of the year.  We have already started selling pre-orders, and over 200,000 orders have been placed. There’s just one problem… the supplier of a main component is having trouble with his production. If he can’t deliver the component soon, the shit will really hit the fan (die Kacke am dampfen) on launch day.

This rather vulgar idiom, with its image of what happens when shit is thrown into an electric fan, is used to describe the results of a problem becoming public in an explosive way. It has been in use since the 1930s.

Our department has been terribly mismanaged and lost a lot of money for the company in recent years. The reasons for this were complex, and involved all of the upper management failing to solve the problems. But instead of trying to deal with the roots of the issues, management has decided to find a scapegoat (Sündenbock) – one of the senior managers has been asked to leave the company.

The term scapegoat, a person who is blamed or punished for the sins of others, derives from the common English translation of the Hebrew term azazel which occurs in Leviticus 16:8. This passage describes the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement, in which one of two goats was chosen to be sent alive into the wilderness, symbolically carrying the sins of the people.

Our company is an old, family-owned British enterprise with a long and proud tradition in the industry. We have always taken advantage of this image in our advertising, and labelled all of our products „Made in England.“ So, as you can imagine, when it was announced that the company was to be taken over by an American investment fund, the industry journals had a field day (großen Tag haben).

Originally, a field day was a military term for a day spent in field manoeuvers. Over the 19th Century it came to be used for any activity that could take place in a field, for example hunting. From there, the modern meaning developed – a great opportunity or time for excitement and enjoyment.

After leaving my last job because of a conflict with my manager, I’ve been looking for a new position and doing job interview after job interview. I’ve had many difficult interviews – but this last one was just ridiculous. When they found out about the difficulties I’d had in my last job, they gave me the third degree (jmd in Kreuzverhöhr nehmen) to find out all the details. Even if they offer me the job, I won’t take it – not if that is how they treat their staff.

We have the Freemasons (Freimaurer) to thank for this idiom. The Freemasons have three degrees of membership – the first is Entered Apprentice, the second Fellowcraft, and the third is master mason. To reach the third degree, a candidate must endure, among other things, an interrogation that is more physically challenging than for the first two degrees. This is how „the third degree“ came to mean „an intensive, possibly brutal, interrogation.“