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Phrase: Get carried away
Getting carried away has nothing to do with being kidnapped or taken out to sea by a strong current while swimming.
Technically, in both situations, someone or something can carry you away.
Unfortunately, It doesn’t fit the idiomatic meaning I’m introducing today.
For today’s purposes, getting carried away means being overly enthusiastic about something or becoming excessive or extreme without realizing it.
It’s all right to have a hobby, but we should be careful not to get carried away.
People like to collect things.
I’m not sure why, but probably it gives us a sense of accomplishment.
A collection of toy cars, books, or even Hello Kitty products is a tangible representation of what we have done.
Problems arise when people get carried away with their collecting, and it becomes a problem.
I like to read, and I love to collect books.
About 25% of my book collection is unread, and about 50% consists of books I have read more than once.
During my backpacking days, whenever I finished reading a book, I would leave it wherever I happened to be.
If I was in a hostel lounge, I left it on the sofa for someone to find and enjoy as much as I did.
It broke my heart every time I parted with a book.
Backpackers have to carry everything they have on their backs.
I couldn’t get carried away with buying and keeping books because I couldn’t carry them.
These days I have my own home and a closet-sized library to keep books.
My wife thinks I’m getting carried away with all of my unread books, but she doesn’t understand.
There’s nothing as sad as an unread book, so I must ensure they have company.
Misery loves company, as they say.
How do you like that play on words?
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 70.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
