The following 18 sentences are all complicated ways of saying common English sayings – can you decipher them?
(Answers follow)
1. Male cadavers are incapable of rendering any testimony.
2. Neophyte’s serendipity.
3. A revolving lithic conglomerate accumulates no congeries of small, green, biophytic plant.
4. Members of an avian species of identical plumage tend to congregate.
5. Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity.
6. Freedom from incrustations of grime is contiguous to rectitude.
7. It is fruitless to become lachrymose of precipitately decanted lacteal fluid.
8. Eschew the implement of correction and vitiate the scion.
9. The stylus is more potent than the rapier.
10. It is fruitless to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated canine with innovative maneuvers.
11. Surveillance should precede saltation.
12. Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minific! Fain would I fathom your nature specific!
13. The person presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the optimal cachinnation.
14. Exclusive dedication to necessitous chores without interludes of hedonistic diversion renders Jack a hebetudinous fellow.
15. Individuals who make their abodes in vitreous edifices would be well advised to refrain from
catapulting petrious projectiles.
16. Where there are visible vapors having their provenance in ignited carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
17. All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly resplendent.
18. Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
Answers
1. Dead men tell no tales.
2. Beginner’s luck
3. A rolling stone gathers no moss.
4. Birds of a feather flock together.
5. Beauty is only skin-deep.
6. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
7. Don’t cry over spilled milk.
8. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
9. The pen is mightier than the sword.
10. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
11. Look before you leap.
12. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are!
13. One who laughs last, laughs best.
14. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
15. Those who live glass houses should cast no stones.
16. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
17. All that glitters is not gold.
18. Beggars can’t be choosers.