I've just had an idea of adding English Idioms topic to the Learning English forum. Since almost every day I discover something new about English idioms; and despite the fact that almost all native speakers at our May workshop said that in their view it IS NOT a good idea to teach idioms to the students of English, in my humble opinion, it is not quite right.
Yesterday I was quite surprised to learn that John, an American who works for International House Kharkov, had never heard "beating ABOUT the bush". He said that he'd heard only "to beat around the bush". As I learnt later it is just British and American English as usual (beat about the bush - Br; beat around the bush - Am), but I managed to find it only in the Activator, a part of Longman Contemporary English Electronic Dictionary.
By the way, here is the entry from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:
beat about/around the bush
to avoid or delay talking about something embarrassing or unpleasant
Don't beat around the bush. Ask for your account to be paid, and paid quickly.
Activator:
beat about the bush
British /beat around the bush American [verb phrase] to avoid talking about the most important detail of something and talk about other details instead, because you are embarrassed, not confident etc
Don't beat about the bush - get to the point.
If you want to leave, just say so instead of beating around the bush.
I also think that I know quite nice synonym which isn't given in the Activator.
British English (in American English it has another meaning) - to "waffle" or "waffle on".
Any corrections or additions?
PS You may have heard this joke about George W. Bush beating about/around the bush.
Nikita Kovalyov
http://www.eclecticenglish.com/
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