This article is based on the insights gained in research into the didactics of multilingualism which assumes that language learners in tertiary education are never a ‘cleanskin’, but are already plurilingual, either because of different languages of origin or because of the languages they learnt in secondary education. In order to use the resources already available thanks to plurilingualism, it is one of the essential tasks of teachers in foreign language teaching to activate the learners’ prior knowledge, stimulate transfer performances and promote integrated, networked learning. Using selected examples of widespread idioms and their occurrence in advertising, caricature and meme, the article outlines how an impulse can be given to resource-oriented and cross-linguistic learning in foreign language teaching.