English is full of idioms, including “cool as a cucumber,” which describes someone who remains calm in difficult situations. The internal rhyme and sensory details make it well thought out. Cucumbers are rarely cooked and are often used in salads. Other food-related idioms include “peanuts” for cheap prices and “red as a beet” for embarrassment.
As any native English speaker can attest, English, whether British or American, abounds in idioms. Idiomatic expressions might obviously be metaphorical, or their true meaning might be far from obvious. The “cool as a cucumber” idiom is relatively transparent, evoking a person who remains cool, calm, and collected in a difficult situation just as the inner flesh of a cucumber remains cool even though it has just been picked from a warm garden.
One of the interesting features of this language are the sounds. “Cool” and “cucumber” both begin with a /k/ sound followed by a vowel that, while different, is close enough to suggest a pleasant and playful internal rhyme. Furthermore, both words stress the initial syllable and the only other words in the idiom have almost no meaning by themselves, which makes this saying well thought out.
“Cool as a cucumber” more than succinctly describes a person who is self-sufficient. It simultaneously taps into the sensory details of sight and touch. Regardless of the specifics, almost everyone who speaks English not only knows what a cucumber is, but has first-hand experience. That direct experience almost certainly supports the image of a cucumber as being fresh to the touch, whether it’s in dried fruit or in the garden.
In fact, both for their reputation for being cool and for other characteristics, cucumbers are very rarely part of a dish that has been cooked. Many diners point out that misguided cooks who add diced cucumbers to a casserole or soup are likely to have nearly as much food left after their meal as they did before. Most cuisines that feature cucumbers either have them as a main salad ingredient, such as Indian Yogurt Cucumber Salad, or add them to other greens such as carrots and red bell peppers for their soft counterpoint to the crunch of a salad. .
The phrase “fresh as a cucumber” isn’t the only food-related idiom. Anyone who has been told by a salesperson that the price of a new item is “peanuts” knows the point is that the item is incredibly cheap. Indeed, if the price is indeed that low, an enthusiastic shopper might “go bananas,” while a less enthusiastic one might remark that the savings are just “a mountain of beans.”
However, not all food idioms indicate happy times. Being told that a newlywed was chosen by his much younger wife because she “has one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave” is just a fancy way of saying she’ll soon be six feet under. Anyone caught spreading gossip is likely to turn “red as a beet,” a sure sign to everyone around that the embarrassment is serious. Now there’s a situation where it’s hard to stay fresh like a cucumber!
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