Echar una cana al aire

[JPablo]

Interesting!
In Spanish you can also say "liarse la manta a la cabeza" (which literally means "to wrap a blanket around your head", but checking in the Oxford Superlex translates back to your "throw caution to the wind"

(I like when I think of an expression without checking the dictionary and then I confirm that I had the right idea when I do check...)

(By the way, just as a side note, in the book The Professor and the Madman, the making of the OED, it is mentioned there that in Shakespeare's times there was NO dictionary... so I am amazed at the ability of the Bard to write, and the ability of his public/audience to understand him...!)

[poli]

Are you sure the public understood him? or understands him?
It takes a really good director and cast of performers to communicate
all that Shakespeare has to offer in works as complicated as "Hamlet".
His words are still the gold standard in English even though Elizabethan English is hard for modern speakers to connoiter.

[JPablo]

Well, I am not that sure. Nowadays someone reading his books has to have quite a good dictionary, or a good footnoted edition... and even then... it is (at least for me) even more difficult than Cervantes... (But to the degree he was such a success in his day, I'd think that the public at that time must have gotten the ideas... or at least be entertained with the action...) (It is difficult to evaluate...)