die Kuh vom Eis holen

to resolve a tricky situation; to sort things out

Origin

From rural life; a cow that strays onto ice stands still and risks freezing in place or breaking through - the farmer must laboriously bring the valuable animal to safety. As an idiom dated by Küpper to around 1965.

Source →

Building blocks

Words in this expression

das Eis· ice cream holen· to fetch der Kompromiss· compromise die Kuh· cow vom· from the

Grammar that uses this word

Regular verbs: er/sie/es-form (stem + -t)Regelmäßige Verben: er/sie/es-Form (Stamm + -t)
Regular verbs: wir-form (stem + -en)Regelmäßige Verben: wir-Form (Stamm + -en)
Preposition 'von' (from/of, dative)Präposition 'von' (Dativ)
Adjective declension after the definite article (nom./acc.)Adjektivdeklination nach bestimmtem Artikel (Nom./Akk.)
Modal verb 'wollen' (to want)Modalverb 'wollen'
Modal verb 'dürfen' (to be allowed to)Modalverb 'dürfen'

Examples

Mit diesem haben wir die geholt.
With this compromise we got the situation sorted out.