expressões com a palavra wound

The first expression I want to talk about with the word wound is "to lick somebody's wounds". Before I get into it, let's try to understand its literal meaning. When an animal like a dog is injured, they lick their own wounds to make them better. So imagine you saying that you're licking your wounds. How can that make any sense if you're not literally licking your wounds? That would be very disgusting by the way.

The good news is that people aren't licking their wounds yet. When you hear someone saying that, it simply means they're recovering from a defeat or a rebuke. So imagine you were at school one day and on your way back into the classroom, you trip over and fall in front of the whole school. Of course they don't miss the chance to laugh at you and make as much fun as they can. You're not the kind of person who takes jokes that well, so you spend a few days at home before getting up the courage to face your classmates again.

After a while and a lot of advice, you go back to school and decide not to let criticism and bullying get to you. Here's what you say to your friends when they ask you if everything's alright: After all that humiliation, I'm back to school to lick my wounds. But what do you mean by that? In other words, what you said was basically that just like an animal licking their wounds to make them better, you're doing your best to recover from hurt feelings.

And here's our second expression: rub salt in a wound. Now bear with me: Can you imagine how painful it would be to literally rub salt in your wounds? If you don't know what the verb rub means, here's the meaning: move one's hand or a cloth repeatedly back and forth on the surface of (something) with firm pressure. So imagine you and all of your friends went to a party except for Tommy. He wasn't invited to the party. The day after the party you meet up with him and one of your friends starts talking about the party and how fun it was. Of course that's not a good idea. Tommy was very unhappy about being left out and even a little bit angry at all of you for leaving him aside. So when your friend starts mentioning all the fun things you did at the party, here's what you say: C'mon dude. Don't rub salt in the wounds by letting him know how enjoyable the party was.

The example must've made the expression a whole lot easier. But in case you haven't understood it yet, rubbing salt in your wounds basically means to deliberately make someone's unhappiness, shame or misfortune even worse. That's all for today. Take care!