Visual Idiom Dictionary
Idioms make no sense when you translate them literally
English learners read "break the ice" and picture shattered frozen water. Native speakers use expressions daily without knowing why we "spill the beans" or "let the cat out of the bag." Traditional dictionaries explain idioms with more text, which doesn't help visual learners. Figurative language creates comprehension barriers because the literal words mean something completely different from the intended message.
About this tool
This visual dictionary explains idioms through images. Enter any English expression and get three things: a plain language definition, the historical origin, and an AI-generated image showing the literal interpretation. The visual component creates memory anchors that make idioms easier to recall. Popular phrases load instantly from cached results.
AI-generated images for idiom visualization, plain language definitions, historical origin explanations, GIF support for dynamic illustrations, database caching for common phrases, user-submitted idiom requests, and MongoDB storage.
Language learners understand figurative expressions faster with visual context. The gap between literal translation and actual meaning becomes visible and memorable.
Prompts used to build this app
When I tried "break the ice" everything worked but when I try other phrases I get errors. Ok, this works great. Here are the final few issues to fix:
- When I scroll down on the page with the results, the SEARCH bar keeps floating - please make it stay in its place.
- Please remove the section with "Was this helpful?", Yes, No, Report - all of these buttons are not needed.
- For generating an image, please generate an image from the definition and not from the phrase. For example, for a phrase "break the ice", I want to see an image of people in a social setting and not people actually breaking the ice.
- Downloading the image doesn't work - please fix.
The images are still showing the actual phrase. For example, now I entered "let the cat out of the bag" and the images are showing cats that are coming out the bag. I don't want that, I want to see images of people avoiding talking about a topic. This is the definition that is returned in a text format from an LLM.
