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English Idiom: A kick at the can
I’ll start today’s idiom with another saying: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
If you want to succeed, the most important thing is to continue working at it.
Each try is another kick at the can.
The idiom means to attempt to do something.
If you fail at something on the first attempt, you have to try again.
Every year in Japan, high school students take entrance exams to enter their preferred university.
If they are unsuccessful the first time, they can wait another year and take another kick at the can (they can make another attempt to pass the test).
There is another very similar idiom, a kick at the cat.
The meaning is the same as a kick at the can, but I prefer to kick cans instead of cats.
Kicking cats is cruelty to animals.
I want to assure anyone reading post this that no cats were harmed while writing this entry.
A few cans may have been dented, though.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 78.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.