I believe that the amount of idioms contained in the english language (or any language, right?) is infinite. Humor in a language is making up your own funny original idioms. They shouldn’t be taken literally but you don’t need to memorize idioms to get their contextual meaning… creative and humorous people make up their own “play on words”. Any opinions on this.
When you are very busy, you can say “neko no te mo kari tai,” which literally means “I need help even from a cat.” It is a set phrase in Japanese. If you say “I need help from a dog,” I wonder how it is understood. I feel that making a new idiom is not easy.
猫の手も借りたいほど忙しい。
猫(neko)の(no)手(te)も(mo)借り(kari)たい(tai)ほど(hodo)忙しい(isogashii)。
If “Let the cat out of the bag” is an idiom meaning to tell a secret by mistake, can I say “Let the cat into the bag”?
Errata:
“I wonder how it is understood” should read “I wonder how it will be understood.”
(the second post of this tread)
Errata:
“this tread” should read “this thread.” Sorry.
Idioms are a bit like compacted, very familiar stories, immediately understood by most people beyond childhood (I don’t know at which age children children stop demanding that an idiom be explained). So, if you want to turn an idiom around, you may have to give a little explanation even to an adult: …to PUT the cat INTO the sack, so to speak … Here I have used stress and the pointer ‘so to speak’ to signpost my little sleight-of-mouth.
By the way: life is there to be lived, errors are there to be made.