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A textbook called English
In Canada, she learned English from a book called English. It was green and blue, with a design like a Greyhound bus seat. When she finished it, she felt like Neo waking up in the Matrix, sure that she knew English.
She did not. The English in the book and the English people actually use are different things. In college, the career office steered her toward an interview with BCG, where she was asked whether she had experience doing something. She answered that she had quite a bit of experience below the belt.
The difference between below the belt and under my belt is almost nothing, and in that interview it was everything. She didn't get the role, and that phrase was part of the reason. Even now she is still learning English, setting by setting, down to the fine textures of words and meanings.
Why do idioms trip up language learners?
An idiom's meaning cannot be worked out from its individual words, so a learner who knows every word can still miss the point. Linguists who study formulaic language note that fluent speakers store many common phrases as whole units rather than building them word by word. Textbooks tend to teach grammar and vocabulary in their standard forms, while such phrases are mostly picked up by hearing them in real settings.
Where does 'below the belt' come from?
The phrase comes from boxing, where punches below the waist are fouls. By the late nineteenth century it was being used for any unfair or underhanded move. 'Under one's belt' has a separate history: it originally described food or drink that had been eaten, and it was later extended to things a person has achieved.
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