Maybe your native language has metaphors similar to English, or maybe your friends are better at learning English than my friends.  :P<p>But my point is that many metaphors look &quot;natural&quot; only after you learn it: you have to memorize them, and you think it&#x27;s natural only because you&#x27;ve been doing it all your life.<p>E.g., &quot;hot-headed&quot; is a decidedly English metaphor.  In Korean, &quot;his head is getting hot&quot; would mean he&#x27;s getting annoyed&#x2F;angry at the present situation, not that he has a propensity for getting annoyed in general (which is what English &quot;hot-headed&quot; means).<p>Similarly, English &quot;cool&quot; doesn&#x27;t just mean &quot;the situation isn&#x27;t hot.&quot;; it also implies a positive situation.  In contrast, you can say &quot;The show only received a lukewarm reception.&quot;, but you can&#x27;t say &quot;It&#x27;s OK, he was lukewarm about the mishap.&quot;<p>As another example, in Korean, you &quot;turn blue&quot; when you&#x27;re shocked&#x2F;aghast, not when you&#x27;re gloomy.  All this stuff is basically a minefield of subtle misunderstandings.