Maybe it's not top of mind, but we do use language in ways far beyond the literal. At the end of the day, when the chickens come home to roost, we find ourselves using many expressions that are really shorthand for bigger concepts.
Longtime educators Shirley and Harold Kobliner did the hard work of assembling many of them, in the book So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That'll Knock Your Socks Off.
Shirley died in 2016, Harold in 2020. Their daughter, Beth Kobliner, visits with the story of the book and the larger story of a family that truly loves language and how it is used.