Clarification: This post is primarily intended for non-native English speakers, but I hope it will be interesting for others as well.

Be cautious with idioms! I’m joking, of course, but you do need to be careful with them, especially if English isn’t your first language. Even native speakers can run into issues when traveling to another English-speaking country where idioms might have different meanings, leading to confusion.
However, if English is not your mother tongue, keep one thing in mind:

Yes, idioms are cool—they add color to your speech and make it sound more fluent. They’re a sign of language mastery. But as a famous movie character once said, “Shit happens.” So, make sure you know what you’re saying, and it’s a good idea to practice idioms before using them in everyday conversation.
Of course, knowing many idioms helps you understand others better. But idioms often sound strange, seem unrelated to the topic, and can be tricky to trace back to their origins. That’s why it’s easy to misstep when using them.

Here in Bulgaria, we have a peculiar idiom: “Nobody shaves me for a plum.” It means no one pays attention to me. (Yes, I just used an English idiom there, but I believe it fits well and isn’t out of place.) As odd as it sounds, this expression has its origins in a time long past, when bartering was common, and plums were extremely cheap. So, if you went to a barber and tried to pay with plums, he wouldn’t give you the time of day.

Years ago, I worked at an Institute of Physics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. There was a Russian professor—a very clever lady—who had lived in Bulgaria for many years and spoke Bulgarian fluently.

One day, she was presenting a report on her recent achievements, but the auditorium was too noisy. People were talking, and not many were paying attention to her. She grew increasingly nervous, stopping and starting several times as she tried to regain the audience’s focus. Finally, in a moment of frustration, she burst out, shouting: “Everyone is talking to each other, and nobody shaves my plum!”

Yeah, she got the idiom slightly wrong. No big deal, right? But there was a small problem. Idioms themselves are harmless, but there’s also slang, in which completely innocent words can take on different meanings. And in the most widespread simpleton slang, the word “plum” refers to a part of the female body—specifically, genitalia. Err, the basic one. You can imagine that she suddenly had everyone’s full attention.

Idioms can help you sound more fluent, and it’s good to use them. However, make sure that you’re saying exactly what you intend to say