178 advanced English Phrases and Idioms for Everyday Conversations

have you ever had a food that you tried at first and you didn't like it but the more and more you tried it or you were exposed to it the more you started to actually enjoy it or you liked the taste in English we call this an acquired haste I'm sure you're really familiar with the concept for this concept I think of sushi because most people in the United States Americans we don't like sushi the first time we try it because we typically don't have a lot of raw fish or uncooked fish and we're not even that much of rice eaters and we definitely don't have a lot of dried seaweed for me when I tried Sushi I had to try it quite a few times before I really started to like it and enjoy it so I had to acquire The Taste or acquire the liking for sushi you can use this phrase and acquired taste to talk about other things like clothes music movies just things that take a long time to start to like so you have to be exposed to something for many times to acquire The Taste the first phrase is a really common compliment that we tell people sometimes when one person has an idea and the other person has the exact same idea and instead of just saying oh we have the same idea we say great minds think alike so this means that we're thinking the same same thing and you're kind of complimenting yourself if you say this as well as the other person like we are so smart we have great minds and we think the same great minds think alike that do you say this phrase in your first language great minds think alike because it is so common to say to another person here in the United States when you guys have the same idea or you were thinking about doing the same thing at the same time so sometimes in a more casual conversation I'll say what do you want for dinner and the other person says pizza I'll think I was going to say pizza too great minds think alike let's go get some pizza so this is a really common fun phrase that we use to compliment another person here in the United States an acquired taste an acquired taste this next phrase can be really funny to use if you see someone and they are staring at someone they like often times in English we call that their Crush so if you see a girl and she really likes a boy but she hasn't told them yet um she will have what we call googly eyes so you could say why are you making googly eyes at him that just means you're looking at them in a really loving way so this is a really informal phrase that just means you have an expression on your face that you're staring at someone because you probably really like them if you're giving them googly eyes another way we use this phrase googly eyes is just to explain how a c cartoon looks when they have just funny eyes we call them googly eyes try saying this phrase because it's super fun and funny to say googly eyes googly eyes in English when you describe someone as having a good head on their shoulders it means they make very responsible very moral and very good decisions you used to have a good head on your shoulder before Rodney got a whole time now if you have children you really hope that your children's friends have good heads on their shoulders this is just the phrase or the idiom that we use to say like their friends are responsible and their friends aren't a negative influence on their life when I was a kid my friend's dad said you know I'm really glad that you hang out with my daughter because you really have a good head on your shoulders I was pretty responsible and I mostly made good decisions when I was younger especially when I was a teenager now on the contrary if you have someone one who does not have a good hand on their shoulders they are a bad influence you can say I want you to have nothing to do with them so when we say we have nothing to do with them it means we want no association they are not a good person I want nothing to do with any of you and we can use this phrase I want nothing to do with them I want nothing to do with him her I want nothing to do with it or you could even say I want nothing to do with that it just means you want no association in general the other day my friend and I were going to go meet at a restaurant and we left at the same time in two separate cars and I called them and I said hey I'm right on your tail that means I was following them because I didn't know how to get to the restaurant so I was directly behind them that English phrase to be right on someone's tail means you're directly behind them or if you're chasing someone you use this expression to say you almost caught up to them I'm right on your tail white as a ghost now a ghost is obviously typically portrayed as the color white especially in movies and television shows and a very common way to say that somebody's skin has gone very pale either because they are very frightened or about to be sick is we say they were white as a ghost maybe you've seen television shows or movies where a woman tells a man that she is unexpectedly pregnant and the man will turn white as a ghost he'll look very surprised and the color will go out of his face so he'll look very white so in English we use the Expression white as a ghost when someone is you know unexpected of something and they're very surprised or sometimes if someone is getting sick about to vomit or throw up we say they turn white as a ghost before I come out looking white as a ghost see you wouldn't know that because you're white as a Ghost speaking of the color white I hope that you do not tell any white lies in English we use the phrase white lie to refer to a very small very minor lie that we tell and usually when we tell a white lie it's because we don't want to see the truth and offend someone or hurt someone's feelings so an example of a white lie would be if your friend says hey do you want to go out to dinner with me today and you say actually I have a lot to work to do at home I can't go out tonight now the white lie here might be that you don't actually have any work to do but you just want to relax and you don't want to go out that night but you don't want your friends feelings to be hurt you don't want them to s that you don't like them so you're just saying I'm so busy I can't go out that's just a small lie it's not a major one but it's a white lie some people believe that is bad even to tell a white lie and some people think that white lies are okay because they can save you some stress of offending someone or telling someone something that's just too honest it's only a white lie even a little white Li these are called Little White Lies Little White Lies have you ever heard of some someone with a white collar job in English when someone has a job where they don't work with their hands and they definitely don't get dirty in their job they do more of office work we call that a white collar job we also use the phrase in English white collar crime this is a crime that has not hurt anyone it's not violent of any sort it's more of a financial crime so maybe you have stolen some money somehow or you Have Cheated the system in a way with money we refer to those as white collar crimes so anything that relates to White Collar in English just means a professional job that works in an office setting or in a corporate or financial setting rather than working with their hands many people go to college so that they can get a white collar job White Collar college grad White Collar Blue Collar White color crime this next phrase it can be applied in a lot of different ways if you take a verb you add e d as the suffix and then you say out like we could say I'm hiked out if you've gone hiking all day you can say I'm hiked out that means you don't want to hike anymore because you've done that action so much or if you've studied and studied and studied and you don't want to study anymore you could say I'm studied out so this just means that you've done something so much that you are completely exhausted and you don't want to do that action anymore to tie someone over so when we use this phrase to tie someone over or often we say this will tie you over this is an incredibly useful phrase it means you're coming up with a temporary solution so something that's going to fix a problem only for a little bit until you can find a longterm solution to their problem so for instance if somebody doesn't have any money but they're going to get paid pretty soon you could say here's a couple of dollars to hold you over or to tie you over until your paycheck on Friday so that means the few dollars should help but they need to get paid on Friday to actually solve the problem or if someone's really hungry but it's not dinner time yet you could say here is a quick snack to tie you over until dinner so when they eat dinner they won't be hungry anymore but if you give them just a little snack before dinner they'll not be hungry just for a little bit or if someone's really bored you can say hey here's a book to tie you over until and you know you have something to do you tie up p over here I find this next phrase in English especially over email to be incredibly useful because it helps people do things that you want them to do for you so recently I was emailing someone about getting a certain service and I wanted a really good price and they said sorry we can only give you this price I responded could you work your magic and ask if you can get me a better price so this just means I'm kind of complimenting the person like what they do is Magic to get me a better price so in this way using this phrase I was being kind of manipulative you don't always have to use this phrase in quite a manipulative way but you can use it just to complement someone on the work they do sometimes we use this phrase just work your magic to mean just get it done however you get it done I totally trust you so if you're asking someone hey could you help me with the cleaning over here they could say yeah how do you want to clean it you could say well just work your magic you know how to do it so this just means just help me get it done I don't care how you get it done work your magic work your magic time to work your magic a really important phrase to know in English is a hard copy what do we mean when we say I need a hard copy of this maybe you've already heard this phrase but you didn't know exactly what it means basically when you ask someone for a hard copy of a document you're asking for a printed version on actual paper nowadays there are so many things that are set digitally on the computer but sometimes we actually need to see what we need to read on paper or maybe we need to sign it or give it to someone else so we ask for a hard copy or a printed copy on paper one way that I use this phrase is sometimes I say yeah I actually rent a hard copy of this book this means that I didn't listen to it on an Audi book or I didn't just read it on my computer or my phone me a hard copy right there o l i n hard copy please I mean I'm sure you printed out a copy you have a hard copy right this next English phrase is really useful especially if you're starting a new job or you're going to a new University or school or you're learning a new language the phrase is a crash course and you probably would not be able to guess exactly what this means in English so listen carefully if you give someone a crash course on a subject it means you teach them just the bare minimum about something really quickly so that they can do the job but they're not going to be able to do it well if you just gave them a crash course for instance long ago I was a barista which means I worked at a coffee shop and on my first few days I had just had a crash course on how to make all of the drinks on the menu so I was making a lot of mistakes because I was not taught thoroughly how to make everything and so a lot of people were getting their coffee incorrect that day if you are going to go to a new country maybe you don't speak the language so you just get a quick crash course on the basics you'll learn how to say Hello Goodbye please thank you where's the bathroom you're not getting actual of information you're just getting a crash horse which means a brief overview or just the bare minimum I'm going to give you a crash course okay crash course manipulation this next English word is really important because an English learner asked me about this question the other day a student of mine asked me what does it mean when someone says you look bloodshot and actually in English we typically say your eyes look bloodshot bloodshot eyes are eyes that are pretty red for either the reason that the person is very tired which is usually why I have bloodshot eyes or if a person is intoxicated they could have bloodshot eyes or maybe there's just a medical problem that was the reason that they have bloodshot eyes if you have an injury in your eye your eye will look bloodshot or very red and it can be quite scary if you have extremely bloodshot eyes so now you know how to describe someone with very red eyes using the word bloodshot in English bloodshot eyes no not the bloodshot in your eyes when you were a child you probably raced your brother or your sister or your friend and maybe they started the race before you in English we call this getting a head start so when you were a child you know having race you might have said hey that's no fair you got a head star that means you started first so anytime someone starts a competition early giving them an advantage we call that giving them a head start in the United States there is a big government program that provides preschool services to young children because not everyone gets to go to preschool here it's not as common as other countries and it's typically given to children who our lower income and we call it head start so it's basically just trying to give these children early exposure to school and academics to give them a head start in school so hopefully they'll be successful early on so giving someone a head start can just mean trying to give them an advantage early on in a competition or a job or whatever it might be it's better to get a head start okay pal they got a head start Head Start One phrase that I really really like to use to be polite and just express my gratitude or my thankfulness for something that somebody does for me as I say thank you for going to the trouble so a lot of times when I visit my sweet grandmother she will make me a meal she'll make me breakfast lunch dinner no matter what time of day it is even if I said you know Grand you don't have to cook she'll go to the tremble of cooking so we just mean you know going to the effort using effort to do something for someone else so I'll say to my grandma you don't have to go to the trouble of making me food or I'll say thank you for going to the trouble of making me food so this is just a really common phrase we use in English when we're thanking someone or if we're just you know explaining to someone that they don't have to do something because we think it's going to inconvenience them so it's seen as a pretty polite phrase in English thanks for going to the trouble want go to the trouble I don't want you to go to the trouble have you ever told someone something and they seem to just not listen and do the complete opposite well the good phrase that we have in English for this exact scenario is we say it went in one ear and out the other so this is just a funny image of you know telling someone something and it just goes through their head and it doesn't stay in their brain and they don't listen so a lot of people with their husband or their wife they'll tell them something and when they feel like they're not listening to their advice or what they ask them to do they'll say well I feel like that just went in one ear and out the other meaning I just feel like you are not listening to me which we usually use this phrase when we are very frustrated with someone in English in one year and out the other in one year and out the other with you isn't it Marge in one ear and out the other have you ever gone on your phone and said I'm just going to watch a couple videos maybe just for one or two minutes and then you keep scrolling and scrolling and one thing led to another and then you've been scrolling for over an hour well this English phrase one thing led to another it just means that even though you think you're just going to do one thing it literally leads to you Tak more time and doing things related to that one thing another example I can think of that's quite common with this phrase is when you say to yourself I'm just going to quickly clean up I'm not going to do too much here and you start organizing and maybe you take out your old clothes and you start vacuuming one thing leads to another all of the sudden you're cleaning your entire house so this phrase just means that you intend to only do one thing or a small thing and that leads to you doing a lot of different things and we definitely use this phrase more often when we feel guilty about something like for instance you could say I'm just going to have one cookie and one thing lend to another and you eat the whole box so you feel kind of guilty and you say well I just was going to have one but it led to me eating the whole box one thing leads to another and one thing led to another this next phrase was actually one that was new to me recently I actually learned this English phrase but I was asking other people in my life and they were quite familiar with this English phrase as an English learner it would be useful to know the phrase from Soup To Nuts so when you use this phrase it just means that someone has done something thoroughly or they've covered everything completely for instance you could say my wedding plan ER had everything covered had everything planned from Soup To Nuts this just means from the beginning to the end or maybe you're a project manager on a construction site and you made sure that everything about the project has gotten done and it's gotten done really well you could say I have overseen the construction project from Soup To Nuts this means just completely I just think this is a funny phrase and it's one that I learned recently but I found it to be quite useful now as well the complete plans security system Soup To Nuts kick their butts from Soup To Nuts if you want to tell someone that you want to learn more about them the most natural English phrase that you can use is to say let's just get to know each other or if you want to let someone know that your intentions are just to become friends maybe you're not trying to date them right away is you can say I just want to get to know you or we should just get to know each other this phrase is really useful in conversation because it just lets a person know right away that you're interested in getting to know them or learn about them rather than trying to date them or you just feel like you want to tell them that you need more time to get to know them before you date them or before you do something serious like start a business like we could be business partners but let's just get to know each other a little bit better first you could even use this phrase when you start a job with someone you know oh let's just get to know each other before we talk about business get to know each other better people really seem to be getting to know each other this phrase to go to town it definitely doesn't mean exactly what you think it would mean when American English speakers use this phrase to go to town it means that you are doing something with a lot of energy and just enthusiasm so in some families we celebrate Christmas and the children usually sometimes take turns opening presents so maybe the youngest child will open a present and then the next youngest will open a present and then the oldest will open a present everyone kind of watches each other politely and kindly now this is different in other families some families they'll just let their kids go to town on their presents they'll say okay everyone opened your presents and they just rip all the paper and there's no taking turns there's no watching each other politely they are going to town so this phrase can be used in a ton of different ways let me give you a couple more examples maybe you are someone who really enjoys shopping or buying clothes and if there is a sale at your favorite store if you are just going to go spend a lot of money and buy a lot of things you can use this expression you can say I'm just going to town when I go shopping today this means you are not limiting yourself and you're buying a lot of things or if you see someone who really enjoys a certain type of food you can say wow they're really going to town over there that means they're eating a lot of the food they're not restricting themselves you know they're not um trying to be polite eating they're just they're going to town they're eating a lot they're excited about it so this this is usually a positive phrase and it just means we're not limiting our ourselves and we're being really enthusiastic about what we're doing when we're going to town go to town then she can go to town you might have heard English speakers use this phrase you name it at the end of a list so when we're listing things and we want to say you know just everything in this category we'll say this at the end let me give you an example so maybe you ask someone what kind of music do you like and they say I like everything thing and you're like like what do you mean they're like I like rap I like country music I like pop music you name it I like it this just means like any in this category you can think of and you name or say I like it and we can use this phrase just in a lot of different ways when we want to say just everything in this category maybe you ask someone oh I didn't know you knew how to cook and they'll say oh yeah I cook a lot I cook uh Pizza I spaghetti you name it I know how to make it this just means whatever you can think of I can do it and this phrase you name it is definitely used in a more casual way when we're listing things you know it can almost be just kind of joking sometimes like yeah you name it of course you know you're saying just everything even though of course if you say you're really good at cooking and you say you name it you're probably not going to be able to cook everything in the world but it's just a way of saying you know it's an exhaustive long list of things you name it you name it really speaking of food this next idiom to my liking is also one that's very related to food if you say you know this is too sweet for my liking when we use this phrase for my liking it just means to my personal taste you can also hear English speakers say for my liking a lot as well there is really no technical correct preposition that's supposed to be used here you know this is too sweet to my liking or this is too sweet for my liking it just means for my personal taste when you are watching American English movies you will definitely hear this phrase at some point the coast is clear this phrase the coast is clear even though the coast in English means the place where the water meets the land you can use this phrase anywhere just to mean that there is no danger or obstacles present and it doesn't have to be literal danger it can just be you know you're kind of sneaking around for instance maybe you want to leave your work early but you think your boss is going to see you might say to your coworker do you think the boss is around do you think he's looking right now they might say no I think the coast is clear go ahead and seek out of work so this just means yeah everything's clear there's no obstacles or danger going ahead coast is clear oh is the coast clear what are you wearing if you use the phrase in English we're in the same boat it doesn't have to do anything with actually being in a location but it just means you have the same problem for instance one time at work I wasn't getting the emails from my boss at work and neither was my coworker and I said why am I not getting their emails and my cooworker said I don't know I'm in the same boat as you this just means we have the exact same problem so often times we use this phrase we're in the same boat to mean we have the same challenge or the same difficult situation and it can be really comforting to someone when you say yeah I'm in the same boat when you want to just relate to them and say you have the same problem or issue I'm in the same boat but we're all in the same boat teamwork if you want to say that you no longer have any problems or you know you had a challenging situation and now the situation is over we use the phrase in English we are out of the woods if there is a storm in your area in the United States there's a lot of tornadoes and you know after the tornado or the storm passes you want to say you're safe you could say I think we're out of the woods now this just means the storm is over I think we're safe we can come out of our houses we're out of the woods voice is out of the woods have you ever heard the English phrase that something is a blessing in disguise this concept of a blessing in disguise is really common amongst many cultures and languages but let me give you an example just so you know how to use the phrase in English if you maybe were not able to go to a friend's party because you know you're busy or something like that and you were kind of sad at first you thought it was a bad thing but then you'll say well actually I ended up being sick that night and it was kind of a blessing and disguise that I didn't go to the party because I probably would have gotten you all sick so even though it's a negative situation you know it is good that you didn't spread your illness or your sickness to other people and the fact that you didn't go to the party was sad at first but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because you didn't get other people sick so we use this phrase just to turn something that we thought was negative into a positive or we're saying it actually turned out to be a positive or A Blessing a good thing in Disguise hey blessing in disguise this is a blessing in disguise have you ever bought something that broke the bank this English phrase to break the bank it just means that something is really expensive and often sometimes it's unexpectedly expensive for instance recently I paid someone to professionally clean my carpets and it really kind of broke the bank I was surprised at how expensive it was for these services to get your carpets cleaned properly I'm glad I did it but it did kind of break the bank a little bit this phrase the whole nine yards it's a really interesting English phrase because first of all United States is one of the only places in the world that uses yard as a measurement which is equal to 3 ft which of course no one else uses feet sorry about that but this phrase the whole n yards it means you use every resource up completely I tried to look up where this phrase the whole nine yards comes from because it's quite common in everyday English language and there's three theories of where this phrase actually comes from but nobody knows for sure some people thought it had to do with the amount of ammunition that soldiers in World War II would carry n yards some people think it's because cement mixers used to hold n cubic yards of cement and some people thought it was because when a tailor makes a suit they need n yards of fabric so nobody actually knows but when we use this phrase the whole n yards it just means we need everything or we do everything so for instance you could say yeah she had a wedding and she had a photographer a videographer a DJ food whatever the whole nine yards this just means they did everything possible for their wedding or maybe you want to say that your company provides a lot of good benefits so you could say yeah my company provides health insurance paid time off maternity leave the whole n yards this just means everything they give us everything so this is generally a positive phrase to use the whole nine yards whole n yards ski mask flashlight whole n yards when you want to say that something is really really new and very advanced technology you can say it is The Cutting Edge when I was quite young we thought that iPods were The Cutting Edge of Technology because now you know we could just carry around a small device to play you know all of our music that we owned now that is not The Cutting Edge of Technology anymore because the cutting Ed of technology is to carry around your smartphone which connects to the internet and you can stream any song that's ever been made before and that is The Cutting Edge of technology so when we say that something is The Cutting Edge and often we say The Cutting Edge of Technology we just mean it's the newest thing and it's the most Innovative and advanced thing some people say that AI is The Cutting Edge of language learning or AI is The Cutting Edge of just fill in the blank there anything that's a really common way that this phrase is used today Cutting Edge technology it's pretty cutting edge huh when you want to say that something is new refreshing and a positive change in English you can use the phrase a breath of fresh air this is a really positive thing to say about someone when you know they come into a role that they were in before so for instance maybe you see someone at your job and they just got hired and the last person that worked in that role was maybe negative or you didn't like them you could say to the person you are such a breath of fresh air this just means like you're a very positive chain maybe in your house you got new furniture and maybe some new artwork and you could say it's just kind of a breath of fresh air for house this just means it's a positive change that makes you feel good in contrast to the old franer and artwork Pat you are such a breath of fresh air these are breath of fresh air have you ever heard an English speaker say they want a piece of the action this phrase is really popular in business deals and it's often used a lot in movies and television shows just to mean that you want to be involved in the investment or the business deal in some way so maybe you have two friends and they are starting a restaurant and you think that you could be involved in the restaurant as well you might say hey can I get a piece of the action here this also means that you think their restaurant is going to be a profitable Venture and you want to join them so you hear this a lot in television shows and movies and once in a while in everyday life English speakers will use this phrase as well and some of us wanted a piece of the action want a piece of the action if two of your friends are having an argument a good way to say like you guys should stop your argument and get along say your sorry maybe just stop worrying about what you disagree about you can say why don't you guys just bury the hatchet in English this means just end the argument and try to get along you'll hear people say this phrase when they just want to get along with someone that they had a lot of problems with in the past you could say we finally buried the hatchet we got along and we don't argue about this thing anymore so this phrase means the exact same thing as let's make peace to burying the hatchet we must talk to Kang bury the hatchet when English speakers see something that costs a lot of money we might use this phrase that costs a pretty penny so if you see someone wearing a nice watch or a nice handbag or some nice shoes that you think are quite expensive you could say if you're comfortable saying this to the person wow that must have cost a pretty penny that means it must have been very expensive and costs a lot of money for the person so be careful how you use this phrase but now you know the meaning of what it means to say that something costs a pretty penny because it cost a pretty penny oh what do you know that's going to cost me a pretty penny a really interesting thing about this next English phrase is that I hear it said two different ways and I went to yish to confirm that the way that I say it is a little less common than the other way so the way that I say this phrase is I say something is cut and dry now I notice that some some American speakers say cut and dry but you know a lot more say cut and dried and a lot of British English speakers will say cut and dried there's no difference in what we're trying to say here but for some reason that word dry and dried just gets changed sometimes I think according to the dictionary it's supposed to be dried but you might hear it say dry what this phrase means is something is straightforward and predictable I think of the sport of MMA mixed martial arts so like the UFC Conor McGregor um it's not a cut and dry sport sometimes if there is not a knockout or an ending to the fight it goes all the rounds the judges don't always have a cut and dry decision of who was the winner who was better so that is an example of something that is not so straightforward or cut and dry but in some sports things are very cut and dry for instance soccer at the end of the game Whoever has scored more goals is the winner the rules are very cut and dry if you touch the ball with your hand it's a hand ball and the other team gets a kick so if you say that something is cut and dry like the rules to a sport or just anything in general just has rules that cannot be changed you are saying that the rules are not subjective they can't be changed at all cut and dry pretty cut and dry the other day my friend said to me hey do you have plans for tomorrow and I said well I was planning on going to this big event but I have nothing set in stone this phrase set in stone just means official so I think of this phrase as being like you're building a statue of Something official if you say that something is not official you'll say it's not a statue yet it's not set in stone so this phrase is just a really casual and extremely common way that American English speakers say that something is not official yet it can be changed now you can use this phrase in the opposite way as well if you want to say that something cannot change you could say well yeah my plans are kind of set in stone for tomorrow that means they are official I typically hear this phrase used more often to say something is not official not set in stone but it can be used in the other way as well because nothing set in stone nothing set in stone if you have a big plan to go to a wedding or an event or a date whatever it is you have your day all planned out but on the way your car breaks down and you're not able to get there anymore you could say that your plan went up and smoked this phrase is used really often when we want to say that a plan or some kind of work we're doing is completely ruined and we just can't do it anymore a plan went up and smoke this means that what we plan to do can't happen anymore because something went so wrong that it ruined the plan all your dreams can go up and smoke I'm watching the world go up and smoke have you ever met someone and they will argue with you and they'll start to say statistics that feel like they were just made up up out of thin air this phrase to make something up out of thin air it's used to emphasize that someone is just making something up with no factual basis like they're just coming up with it out of their head it's kind of like saying they're lying but they're trying to make something up usually to win an argument or a debate they're making something up out of thin air with no evidence for the pull it out of thin air so pulls these so-called Visions out of thin air have you ever heard someone say they got a weight off their chest this phrase in English it means that someone you know confesses a burden or they confess something that they did wrong to another person and after telling the truth they feel like lighter they feel emotionally lighter it's like a weight has been lifted from their chest and this is what we say in English just really good to get this stuff off my chest if you feel bad or guilty about something that you did to your friend and you finally apologize to that friend you might say I'm so sorry I'm I hope you accept my apology I feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest I was so guilty before if you want to say that someone surprised you and you don't really know like why they are showing up in that moment in English we say it's like they came out of the woodwork or if you know someone surprises you with an ability that you didn't know they had you could say well you pulled that out of the woodwork this just means like it's a very much a surprise we weren't expecting the thing people started coming out of the woodwork to ask me stuff maybe you at your house and an old relative knocks on your door and you say wow you really came out of the woodwork this means I don't know where you came from I haven't heard about you in many years I'm surprised to see you it's a really common phrase in English out of the woodwork this next English phrase is definitely a newer one but I think it's very common now to say this if someone is so upset that they are actually crying and they're crying really hard we sometimes say I'm having an ugly cry this phrase is more common amongst women when we are just you know letting all of our emotions out we're saying I'm having an ugly cry about this so we're crying so hard that we look ugly so something has gone really wrong if we are ugly crying I don't want to ugly cry no one's even here to see maybe a movie makes you so emotional that you can't contain your emotions enough to not look ugly and cry so this is a specific type of crying we're just having an ugly cry because that movie is so sad to us in English we don't always say can you address that or can you address that topic often times in English we say can you speak to that so this phrase is very common in just everyday life and business English if someone says and how much money do you think we can make off of this product and you are not the expert on money or numbers in your business you might say well Jeff can speak to that he is the numbers guy and we say numbers guy to mean that's someone that deals with the math or the economics of something in a business and then continue until they speak something else you can also use this phrase can you speak to that as a question to someone you might say well you commented on this before can you speak to that that means just can you provide more details or more opinions on that topic many times in English if someone completes something despite there being many challenges and many obstacles or problems we can say that they completed something Against All Odds this is a really awesome phrase to use when you want to complement someone's hard work and saying that they didn't give up even when they fa the challenges you can say you completed this Despite All Odds and Against All Odds he fixed it a lot of people they feel like when they go to college it's so difficult because maybe they don't have a lot of money or you know they didn't go to a very prestigious school before but they're learning with really smart students I could say I am going to finish my college degree Despite All Odds or Against All Odds we can also use this phrase in just everyday sports if there is a team that probably is not going to win but then Against All Odds they win the game we use this phrase you know they beat everyone Against All Odds the other day my husband said have you seen my car keys and I started looking all around the house I looked everywhere and then my husband realized his car keys were in his pocket he sent me on what we like to call a wild goose chase in English when you say that you sent someone on a wild goose chase it often means that you made them go look for something or made them try to do something even though there was no point to doing it yeah that's a wild goose chase over here at nakatomi Plaza so in this case my husband had the keys in his pocket he just forgot to check his pockets which happens to everyone and he sent me on a wild goose chase I was looking all throughout the house even though he had the keys all along so there was no point in doing what I was doing this is a really funny idiom we use a wild goose chase to mean that we sent someone to do something even though there was no point or there was no way they could accomplish the actual thing in this case my husband said I'm so sorry I sent you on a wild goose chase instead of saying that you really can't understand something in English we use the phrase I couldn't fathom we don't actually use the verb to Fathom very often in English but this is just a very dramatic phrase to me like we could not understand or fathom even if we thought about the problem or the situation for a long time I couldn't fathom it so sometimes if we think that someone made a really bad decision like maybe they left their children with a bad babysitter you could say I cannot fathom why they would leave their kids with Jill or whoever the bad babysitter is in this story so it just means like you cannot understand it's a really dramatic way of speaking you cannot fathom the first time I heard this phrase was in my college economics class the phrase is there's no such thing as a free lunch have you heard this phrase before this phrase just means in English that even if something seems free there's always a cost to your decisions and they say there's no such thing as a free lunch in economics we use this phrase there's no such thing as a free lunch meaning if you go to a lunch and it's free there's always an opportunity cost so you could have been doing something else with your time in everyday English we use this phrase often to mean that even though someone's off offering something for free they're going to try to sell you something later or you're going to owe them a favor for accepting something free right now so maybe one of your friends says you know oh I'll come and help you out no cost I can do it for you well you'll say well there's no such thing as a free lunch that means like there's kind of a catch do you need me to help you with something later are you going to ask for a favorite in return so you might hear this phrase more and more now that I have taught you there's no such thing as a free lunch this next phrase is really common when it comes to either gambling or business situations if someone uses the phrase to go For Broke it means they're betting everything on one situation or one possible outcome but in that I learn how to take risks and go For Broke so maybe you invest all your money in a startup business this means a very tiny business that has the potential to make a lot of money but if you're investing all of your money in it and they don't do well you're going to be broke so you're going for broke that means you are either going to make it really rich or you're going to be broke meaning having no money if you describe someone as broke that means they don't have any money to spend another instance you can use this phrase is if they're gambling and they bet all their money on one team you can say while you're really going for broke that means if you don't win this you are absolutely going to be broke and down to zero money another idiom that is used in everyday English and my students ask me about all the time is to dodge a bullet so this just means that you have narrowly missed a mistake I convinced myself I dodged a bullet so recently a friend of a friend took a job at a company and you know the company did really really bad and actually went out of business well my friend was thinking about joining their friend at that company right before it went out of business but then they decided not to take the job so they really dodged a bullet there that means they avoided a really bad kind of dangerous financially dangerous situation maybe you're going to hang out with your friend but then you cancel plans at the last minute and it turns out your friend had the flu even though they didn't know it at the time you kind of dodged a bull it because if you would have hung out with them or spent time with them you probably would have caught or been in ected by their sickness so you dodged a bullet a really polite phrase in English is we say don't hesitate to reach out when we say to reach out it means to ask for help or to ask for some information feel free to reach out many times when people email me and say you know do you have an English course that would help me improve my vocabulary I'll say thank you so much for reaching out this means asking for help and contacting me and if you do want to check out my English courses make sure to visit englishwith kayla.com I've got a new course that's going to be available soon for you to study more vocabulary just like the vocabulary in this video but the phrase don't hesitate to reach out is super common that just means don't you know don't worry about asking for help I am here to help you at all times so it's very very polite to say this in English either speaking or over email if you're in a competition and you feel like you are winning but someone is catching up to you you might say the other team is right on our tail we need to keep working hard this phrase is very versatile which means you can use it in many different ways to say that someone is directly behind you either physically behind you or in a competition they're right behind you in the next place they're right on our tail Red Box there's one right on your tail they're staying rip on our tail but they're still on your tail one common abbreviation that we use in English is MI a this expression means missing in action and I'm sure if you've watched a lot of American television or movies you have probably heard this expression before it's very popular it originated which means it was first a term used in the military to describe a soldier someone who's fighting that has gone Miss sing and just cannot be found they are Mia a now this is very sad but in our daily conversation it's used much more casually it just means we don't know where someone is so if you're at a party and someone says Hey where's Jennifer you might saying I'm not sure she's Mia nobody has heard from her that means we have no idea we're pretty clueless about where Jennifer is if someone's not at the party but you knew where they were you knew why they were not at the party you wouldn't use this expression use this expression when you really don't know where someone has gone if you've ever been somewhere and you're supposed to meet up with someone and they don't call and you don't know why they didn't show up you could say well they were Mia so I left that means they're missing an action so I just left because I hadn't heard from them Mia Mia do you think I was born yesterday this phrase is super sarcastic and snarky in English which means it's kind of rude way to respond to someone but it's very popular and it's very used in casual English conversations it's the same thing as saying do you think I'm dumb do you think I'm like a baby was I born yesterday that means you can't trick me because I'm too knowledgeable maybe you have a phrase like this in your language as well another way that we would describe using this phrase is we would say like do you think I'm gullible which means do you think I will believe anything like if your friend said well I won the lottery you might say yeah right do you think I was born yesterday that means I don't believe that the chances of you winning the lottery it's a ton of money is so small that I just don't believe you I'm not gullible I'm not going to believe a madeup story or a lie very easily so if you want to have an attitude just say do you think I was born yesterday yesterday do you think I was born yesterday I was not born yesterday but I wasn't born yesterday the next three phrases in this lesson are all related so if you want to ask someone if you are meeting up or doing something together the next day you might say are we on for tomorrow for are we on for next week or are we on for next month this means are we going to meet is it going to happen this word on can be used in this way and this is kind of slang very casual language you wouldn't use this phrase in a formal business setting you can even use this phrase to say are we on for meeting at the park tomorrow so this is just asking is this planned is it official are we still on for tomorrow yeah totally we still on for tomorrow night are we on for tonight and the best way to respond to this is just to say yep we're on if you're going to meet if you're going to do the thing now if you want to say that something is cancelled you can say tomorrow's meeting is off instead of saying tomorrow's meeting is cancelled this can be used in any sort of situation this could even be used in a more formal situation tomorrow's meeting is off or we're calling it off so to say it's off is short for calling it off or canceling it you you might call your friend and say hey I'm not feeling well so tonight's plans are off this means they are cancelled since you're sick call it off call it off call it off bam call it off okay call it off in English it's really common to say when you want to research something further I'm going to delve into it or if you want to say we should research this topic or the subject further we could say let's delve into it let's talk about it more so this phrase to delve into something means to research or explore something more one thing I can think of that's really common that people delve into in the United States is they research their family's Origins you see the United States is built of a lot of different immigrants from you know many years ago so some people don't know if their family came from Poland Germany Sweden Norway there's all these different places that our extended family our ancestors came from and we delve into the research to find our Origins we'll uh delve into that next week let's delve into your child office where we delve into each other's personal lives this next phrase I would hope so is used to respond to someone to say that you would want them to have done the thing let me give you an example your friend might say I think I studied enough last night and you would say I would hope so this test is is going to be hard this means that yes you should have I would literally hope that you have so it's a good way to respond to someone when they say something that you kind of agree they should have done another way you can use this phrase is your coworker might say well I think I can get the project done by Friday and you think to yourself well Friday is the deadline of the project I would hope so I'd hope it would be done by Friday so this just means you're stating something that's kind of obvious to you that you want to point out to them that something they said relates to I would hope so I would hope so I wouldn't hope so a good phrase that can be kind of tricky to English Learners is the phrase from now on we use this phrase from now on when we want to talk about our Behavior that's going to change from now into the future we're saying we're kind of going to do this thing forever ever so if you've ever sent an email that has some typos or some errors in it you might say from now on I'm going to read my emails three times before I send them because I don't want there to be any mistakes the other day I mistakenly wrote someone's name incorrectly in the email and I just think that's such a rude error so from now on I'm always going to check that and that is a real example I felt so bad spelling someone's name incorrectly from now on I will never do that again from now on nothing bad from now on from now on from now on instead of saying that you have a lot of work and you're feeling kind of overwhelmed and stressed in English you might say I feel swamped to be swamped is a phrase that is used really casually in English to say that you have a lot of work to do so you might say I can't go out tonight I am totally swamped with work this means you have way too many things to do to go out and have fun I'm swamped I'm just swamped I've been swamped in English instead of just saying that we are annoyed or just frustrated with someone a really common way we'll say this is we will say I am fed up with them or you can be fed up with a thing so you could say I am just fed up with the government this means you're frustrated with the government maybe your government is taxing you or doing something that you don't like you're fed up with it you're frustrated and this is a really common thing to say in the United States or you could say I am fed up with my best friend she is always late and never on time this means you're really frustrated because she's being rude and not showing up at the time that you said you would meet well I'm fed up with it fed up with work and everyone's finally fed up with us to lose your touch this idiom means that you have lost or forgotten or you haven't practiced the skills that you used to be really good at maybe you're like me and you used to play a lot of sports when I was growing up I played soccer and basketball and you go to shoot a basketball and it is not even close to going in you could say wow I've really lost my touch I haven't played basketball in so long now you could tell someone that they haven't lost their touch this means that even though they haven't done something in a very long time they're still really good at it for instance you might tell a grandmother who you know is good with a baby while you haven't lost your touch even though she hasn't had babies for many years she's still really good at calming and playing with a baby how did we lose touch you're losing your touch amigo I'm really losing my touch when you don't have time for small talk you might just tell someone to cut to the chase now this could be really rude to say so be careful how you use this phrase to cut to the chase but you could say hey I'm going to skip this part of the story and just cut to the chase this means you're going to skip to the main part so this phrase is really used when you're in a rush you might tell someone that you work with hey I don't have time to explain everything right now I'll just cut to the chase I need your help so this means you're not even going to tell them the story of why you need their help because you're in a hurry and you're just going to tell them what's important still cuts to the chase cut to the chase it's cut to the chase when you want to say that someone has done something thinking it was going to be a good thing but it turns out to you it really wasn't helpful or actually turned out to be a bad thing you could say that they did the thing with the best intentions this phrase comes to mind when I think of a small child thinking that they are going to decorate their mom and dad's house maybe they color on the walls and just make a huge mess they had the best intentions but it turns out they really were just making a mess so I'm saying they wanted to help they were doing it because they thought it was a good thing they had good intentions the best intentions actually but obviously we don't want our children coloring on the walls are making huge messes at our house I had the best intentions with the best intentions I'm sure all lunatics have the best intentions this phrase to make a mockery of something or we can say it to make a joke of something it means that we are being disrespectful to someone who's trying to be serious or seriously teach something or have a serious conversation so an example that comes to mind for this this phrase is if you're ever in school and the teacher is you know really trying hard to teach the class but there's someone in the class that keeps joking around and making fun of the teacher or making loud noises the teacher might say stop making a joke of this or stop making a mockery of this mockery is probably used more formally in our everyday English we say stop making a joke of this this just means that you're not taking this seriously and you're kind of ruining it for everyone else so this can be used in a lot of different situations when someone is being rued or disrespectful in a serious situation they're not supposed to be rude but they are being rude and they're kind of making everything funny that's not supposed to be funny we made a mockery of making a mockery of me and everything I stand for despite your constant mockery do you know someone that's always on the ball this English phrase means someone who always is prepared they're always thinking ahead head someone who is on the ball will always remember everyone's birthdays you know they'll send a card in advance they'll never say happy late birthday because they already know it's your birthday coming up they'll be early to every meeting not only will they be early to meeting they'll be completely prepared maybe they've even printed off notes or they just have something to share with everyone someone who is on the ball is used to describe someone who is just completely prepared so it's quite a compliment to say that someone is on the ball and this is kind of a sports idiom it comes from the idea that in soccer or in other sports if you're right on the ball you're working really hard you're very very prepared trying to help your team win the game I always say that American English speakers are some of the most dramatic English speakers a lot of our phrases are very hyperbolic meaning we're much more dramatic than we actually are thinking in our heads so if we want to call a food really good or delicious we could say it's to die for we often use this with Foods we might say oh those chocolate brownies are to die for as if they're so good you'll sacrifice your life for them that's not really what we're saying it's really an idiom that we're just being dramatic with we can also say you know Kim Kardashian has so many great clothes that are to die for of course this is is being dramatic too if you really liked her clothes you might use this phrase do you know someone who is often distracted or daydreaming well you could say that they're spacing out all of the time so the phrase to space out means just to be daydreaming not thinking about anything maybe you you know walk up to a receptionist or secretary and you're waiting to speak to them they might just be spacing out so to space out means just to be really distracted and a person who is often distracted or who is often spacing out we can use the adjective Spacey to describe them so we could say he is really Spacey he just is never paying attention and of course you wouldn't want someone to space out while they're driving on the road because it's very important to be paying attention and not distracted while you're driving a car so don't space out you just spaced out I just spaced out you space out when you want to say that you are going to take a significant risk or make a commitment you can say you're going to take the plunge I feel like this expression is really commonly used when people are thinking about getting married they might say we're thinking about taking the plunge and normally the literal definition of taking a plunge is jumping into a a pool or jumping into a lake lunging into the water but in this expression we're talking about starting a commitment a serious commitment so some people starting a business is like taking a plunge for them because it's a very serious commitment that they're going to try or maybe they're going to quit their regular 9 to 5 day job to take the plunge and start a business then take the plunge all right who's going to take the plunge hey chip ready to take the plunge a similar expression that's used just a little bit differently is to give it a whirl if you want to say that you're going to try something even though you don't really know how to do it or you've never done it before you can say well I'll give it a whirl if you've never played chess before give it a whirl it's pretty fun that means try it even though you really don't know what you're doing or maybe you've never gone skiing before and you want to learn how you're going to try it this winter you'll say I'm going to give skiing a whirl this winter this means you're going to try it even though you might not be very good at it do you know someone who's constantly on the go this phrase is very very common in English to say that someone is always moving they're always doing things you can also use this phrase as an adjective like we're going to eat on the go this means you might be taking your food in the car or walking while you're eating and going somewhere because you don't have time to sit down and have a meal so this phrase is incredibly useful to use in English doing something on the go you can also say that you are going to learn something on the go that means you're going to learn it while you're doing it you've never done it before no one's explained it to you so you're going to learn on the go a lot of jobs you will learn on the go because it's hard to just teach without actually doing the job first congratulations on adding 21 new English Expressions to your vocabulary I promise you that native speakers will recognize when you use these English Expressions because they're so common and popular to us and it will just sound so natural in your conversations make sure to visit englishwith kayla.com to learn more expressions with me and I'll see you guys in the next lesson goodbye did you know that sometimes in English we call people guinea pigs now this is not an insult to someone we're not saying that they look like the animal or the rodent guinea pigs you'll be my guinea pig and protege but we're actually just seeing that we're using them for a trial or trying something with the person that we calling the guinea pig for the first time so this comes from the idea that sometimes in like laboratory experiments scientific experiments instead of testing something on a person we test it on an animal like a guinea pig so if you try out a new computer program or a new software at your work and nobody has used this process before your boss might say well you're the guinea pig so you'll have to let us know how it works or if it can get the job done this means that you are like the trial person we're using you to try it for the first time another very interesting phrase that we use in English that you might have not come across before is a lemon we're not talking about the fruit but we're talking about something that was built and it just has never worked this is really common when someone gets a car and it has so many problems that the car company takes it back because they figure it was not built correctly we call that a lemon so some states in the United States they actually have what we call a lemon law so if you buy a brand new car if in the first year or so so many things break and go wrong you can get your money back from that car because basically we're saying that car is so defective it was not built properly it was not designed proper properly so if you get something a product mainly and it just never works you can say well that one was kind of a lemon meaning it was very very poor quality this phrase is a really great phrase to use when someone is really incorrect about something and you don't want to just say oh you're totally wrong because sometimes that can come off as a little bit rude instead in English will say well I think you're just a little bit off base on this this means you're not really thinking about this correctly but it's kind of a more polite way to say it another way we can say it is if you are wrong about something you can say well I'm I'm just off Bas about this please correct me if I'm wrong say I don't want to be off base here so maybe you make an assumption about someone and you say oh I didn't think that you would like this but I was totally off base this means you were incorrect because it turns out the person actually liked the thing that you were talking about when I was much younger I thought living in a big city like New York City would just be so amazing in glamorous but the first time I visited there I figured out it's not all it's cracked up to be now this is just my opinion but I think that large cities are kind of noisy kind of polluted a little bit too crowded some people like that lifestyle but for me that's not it's all cracked up to be love yeah why is not not all as cracked up to B this idiom is used when you want to say that something is not as good as it's described a lot of times people will like a movie and they'll suggest it to you and you go and see the movie and you say well that movie was not all it's cracked up to be so this is a really casual phrase it's very informal to say that something was described better than it actually was a lot of times people go to a college or university and and they start out you know in a certain program for a degree and they figure out it's not their true calling in English we use this phrase a true calling to describe what a person was born to do or what their skills best match we usually use this phrase when we're talking about a certain career or we'll say oh my true calling was to be a mother or a father now that M's found his true calling some people will go to school like myself and they'll be trying to get a business degree but then they'll realize that their true calling is to be in education and to be teaching people this is exactly what happened to me or maybe you try to work in the corporate world but you realize your true calling is to be a musician or an artist this just means that that's where your skills are best suited that feels like it's what you were meant to do it's very natural you are totally going to think I'm crazy for this next idiom but American English speakers actually say this if someone is Out For Blood it means that they're doing things in order to seek revenge or in order to harm someone for something they're out for blood you can't fool around so maybe this idiom is pretty popular when you're playing sports the other team has a player that seems to not care if they're injuring people they just want to win the game you can say that player is Out For Blood and it's similar to saying you know they're out for vengeance Revenge if someone is doubting you maybe they're doubting your abilities or they're doubting your knowledge and you feel like you know why are you doubting me just just try me this is the phrase that we use try me so someone might be saying oh I I don't think you know how to do this you can say well try me I bet I know how to do it try me look or if someone's saying oh I'm way too good at let's say you're playing Scrabble I bet that you can't beat me say well try me let's play so this is just you know kind of a challenge like you know I bet I can beat y but I do know this thing try me this next idiom is one of those phrases that has been used forever in the United States and it's still used today it can be said two different ways sometimes we say don't cry over spilled milk or there's no use crying over spill milk so this is a classic idiom maybe you have one just like it in your first language that means you know don't worry about something very minor I don't cry over it I appreciate it right and this idiom also suggests you know you can't change this situation don't cry over it don't worry about it so much just move on clean it up and keep going so often times I literally say to my kids when they spill milk there's no use crying over spill milk don't worry about it let's clean it up and next time let's not spill so we can use this idiom very often in English when someone breaks something or something small goes wrong but we can't change the situation let's just clean it up and move on with our lives when someone is constantly overworked or overstressed we use this phrase they're pushed to the brink or you know if you're trying to argue with someone or annoy them and finally they just you know quit the argument or they leave you could say Well they're pushed to the brink that means they were so annoyed agitated or angered that they just quit or they just went away because they were pushed to the brink so the brink in this phrase is like the limit I told you I was on the brink maybe you've had a terrible roommate at some point in your life they left out dirty dishes they were disrespectful you know they were partying at all hours of the night and finally you were just pushed to the brink by something bad they did and you had to move out of the house or the apartment so when you say that you push someone to the brink it means you push them to their limit if you are overworked we often use the phrase we were pushed to the brink of exhaustion that means we're so tired we couldn't do anything else this next phrase is used so commonly in English and I've heard this phrase forever but it's a little bit difficult to describe for me because it comes so natural in the English language the phrase is wherewithal and I don't see this written much in English but in spoken English it's used all the time so the most classic example of this phrase is when you wake up in the middle of the night and you know there's something going on and you can't even think you can't even see cuz you just woke up you say I didn't have the wherewithal to know what's going on this just means like you're basically half asleep you didn't have the brain power or the thinking to understand what you should do next or have the wherewithal to hire someone or if you want to say that someone isn't very smart or maybe they don't have a lot of resources and you know they want to start a business but you don't think they can do it you could say they don't have the wherewithal to start a business so I most frequently use this phrase if I am sleepy and I just can't do something I say I don't have the wherewithal to get this done that's the most common way I hear this phrase in English and in contrast you could say I was asleep but I did have the wherewithal to wake up and you know get everyone out of the house or because the house is on fire something like that so you can use this phrase in the positive or the negative you had the wherewithal or you didn't have the wherewithal a common idiom in English that means that someone is too late and their actions to either be helpful or effective in a situation is we say they are a daylight and a dollar short so maybe you see someone that you really want to ask out on a date but you wait a long time to build up the courage and by the time you ask them on a date they already are seeing someone they have a girlfriend or a boyfriend you could say well I was a day late in a dollar short so even though I finally built up this courage there was no point because I was too late and I just didn't have enough courage before day late and a dollar short so this can be just kind of a comedic or playful phas in English to if someone literally just shows up late and they're not going to be helpful anymore you say sorry you're a day late and a dollar short have you ever heard someone describe something in English as black and white in English we use the phrase black and white in an idiomatic way rather than literal just to say that something is black and white we mean it's for sure you can't argue with that thing or sometimes they'll say that something is not black and white which means it is up for interpretation or there's no one correct answer let me give you a couple examples to help you understand how we use this phrase in English when I was in college I had to take classes like mathematics and physics and in those classes when you take a test the answer is pretty black and white there's always a correct answer and if you don't get that correct answer then you are wrong now when I took classes that were like literature and art classes if you did an assignment it was kind of not just black and white the teacher could say you either did a good job or a bad job just depending on their opinion it wasn't so black and white black and white in black and white is spretty black and white next let's talk about what it means when an English speaker says that something is a gray area this phrase is extremely common to say that something is a gray area now this phrase is kind of like saying something isn't black and white but instead we use this phrase more often when we're talking about something that isn't quite legal or illegal it's a gray area or if something is not against the rules but it's not technically following the rules either let me give you a couple examples one example of a gray area that I can think of that's really common in American workplaces is when you're not sure if something is your job to do or if it's your co-worker's job to do and your boss says hey this needs to get done it's kind of the gray area of whose responsibility it is but typically someone just does the job because even though no one's assigned to it it's not black and white who's supposed to be doing it they'll do it just because it needs to get done so things that you're not sure who are supposed to be doing the thing that's a gray area in the work Place Escape is our gray area oh honey gray area it's the gray area a really common idiom that English Learners always learn is that there is a silver lining to things in light a silver lining is what we call the positive aspect to an otherwise very negative situation so for instance even though someone is sick the Silver Lining is at least a to stay at home and watch a lot of movies or even though it rained outside and we couldn't go outside today the Silver Lining is that our plants will grow and our garden will grow and we'll have beautiful flowers tomorrow so it's finding the positive aspects in otherwise bad or negative situations in life the silver lighting well Silver Lining well Silver Lining Silver Lining one phrase that I really like to teach to my English students is brownie points you might hear an American English speaker or you might hear me say that you get brownie points for something now brownie points is like this madeup point system it's not real there's no real points or scoring for this but when someone does something just to be nice or just to do something really good for you just because they want you to either like them or just think favorably of them you can say why you get browny points for that so it's not real points but it's just points that are made up and you're just saying like I really like that that's going to make me happy and that's going to make me like you sometimes if you have an older neighbor and you help them with something like maybe you cut their lawn or maybe you help them bring in their groceries to their house you might just get brownie points for that people think that you're a good person just because you did that or if you're at work and you want your boss to like you you might do something that is out of your way to do something really good for instance you finish a project early and you say hey boss got this to you early they'll say nice job you get brownie points that means they just think favorably of you or they like you because you did something extra trying to score brownie points with your sister brownie points for taking a nap a really great phrase that we use in English to describe something that is a very rare and very great opportunity is we say that something is a golden opportunity so for many people immigrating to the United States is a golden opportunity because there are a lot of things that you can do here like can start a business you can go to school as long as you get a visa to come here it's a golden opportunity I know it's not very easy to come here for most people and get a Visa so it's kind of a golden opportunity sometimes if you get a job interview for a job that normally doesn't hire or it's just a really well-paying job you could say this is a golden opportunity for me the job interview is a golden opportunity because you don't normally get such a great interview for a great job you miss some golden opportunities you got a golden opportunity here this this is a golden opportunity let's move on to some darker colors I've got a ton of idioms and phrases involving the color black in English first of all let's talk about what it means to be pitch black you could say it's pitch black outside that means there is no moon in the sky there's no street lights it's just very dark you cannot see anything even if you were to walk outside with no flashlight you would be able to see your hand in front of you because say it's pitch black so when there's no light in English we use that phrase pitch black ow it's Pitch Black in here is Pitch Black is pitch black one way that we describe someone who is very physically injured especially if they have a lot of bruises we say that they are black and blue now this is just a very common way to say that someone has a lot of injuries or bruises from either an accident or maybe they've been beat up by another person or if you sprain your ankle and it starts swelling up and turning bruising colors like kind of purpley black and bluish we say wow my ankle is turning black and blue it's a very common phrase used to say that your injury is getting kind of bad and it's bruising black and blue like black and blue black and blue Fight Night a really important phrase to know in English is black out Dr now sometimes people just say blackout or they say blackout drunk if you want to describe someone who has drank so much alcohol that they won't remember the evening you can say they are blackout drun and it obviously is not a good thing to be this intoxicated or drunk from alcohol seriously blackout drunk cuz you were like blackout drunk you might have this next idiom in your first language if you describe someone as the black sheep of a group or the black sheep of your family it means they are very different from the other people around them and it's usually perceived as a negative thing to be the black sheep for instance if a family has a lot of successful people in it maybe the mom is a lawyer the dad as a doctor several of the kids have gone on to be lawyers and doctors but then one of the kids maybe doesn't want to take that career path maybe that child does something more creative like become an artist or a musician we often say that they are the black sheep of the family now sometimes we say this in a more joking manner but sometimes it really is perceived as a very negative thing to be the black sheep of your family because when we say that someone is the black sheep it means they don't fit in Black Sheep he was the black sheep so the black sheep returns blue blue blue let's move on to some idioms involving the color blue now the first idiom involving the color blue is the opposite of white color which we talked about earlier in the idiom or phrase that we like to use to describe jobs that work with their hand hands like construction or gardening is Blue Collar now I think this phrase comes from the idea that a lot of you know industrial workers that work with their hands they used to wear you know those blue shirts those blue working shirts that say their name on them so the phrase Blue Collar came from this and then usually White Collar people you know they don't get dirty at work so they wear nice white press shirts to work so I'm not saying that Blue Collar is bad blue collar workers are so important because they do the jobs that help keep our houses nice keep our buildings nice keep our streets nice blue collar workers are so important and it's important to know this phrase for English because someone might describe your job as white collar or blue collar attention blue collar workers Blue Collar cop Blue Collar White Collar a woman a man the next spray you might hear someone say when they are extremely sad if they are singing in a certain style and they're saying about their problems or their sorrows we call that singing the blues now typically in the English language blue is associated with sadness so Adele is someone I think of as she kind of sings the blues she sings about heartbreak and things like that when she is sad now I can teach you English English until I'm blue in the face but if you don't practice you will not get better this phrase to do something until you are blue in the face it means you keep doing something that's challenging even and you do it and do it and do it but you don't receive any results so a lot of people will use this phrase you can do this until you're blue in the face but you won't see any results until you do this other thing so my example was you know you can watch English lessons until you're blue in the face or I can teach you English until I'm blue in the face but if you don't practice you won't actually receive results so make sure that you're using all of the phrases in today's English lesson in your real life conversations or if you're watching television or movies hopefully you'll see these phrases as well and if you want the extra practice make sure to use the link Down Below in the description of today's video to download the PDF that goes along with with the definitions and example sentences from this lesson you can deny it till you blew in the face that's what I've been trying to tell you until I'm blew in the face I was talking about Adele earlier in this lesson and this next phrase is from her song Someone like you but we also use this phrase in English all of the time so when we say that something came out of the blue like when she says I hate to come out of the blue Uninvited it means me you come out of nowhere you come out of the sky just out of nowhere you don't know where something came from it was very unexpected if something comes out of the blue so one thing that always brightens my day and makes me happy is when an old friend calls me or texts me out of the blue it's so fun to hear from them that means there's no reason why they called or texted you and it wasn't really expected but you know all sudden they just think of you and they text you something nice or one great thing at work is if you got a promotion out of the blue that means you weren't expecting it but you know for some reason your boss just offers you more money and a better job that would be great out of the blue right out of the blue alone out of the blue that's out of the blue now we talked about all of these color idioms and now we're going to move on to the color red we talked about how blue can often be associated with sadness well I associate red typically with anger or you know warnings things like that so think about that when you interpret idioms and phrases in English you know what the different types of colors can be associated with which feelings the first idiom I'm going to teach you is when we call something a red flag you might have an idiom or phrase similar to this in your first language as well if we say well that was a red flag it means it was kind of a warning that made us a little bit nervous for instance if you go on a date with someone and they say well I still live with my mom and actually um I don't have a job those might be red flags to you because you might be thinking well why aren't you working and why don't you have your own place if you're an adult you know those could be red flags but some people that might not be a red flag I don't know for some people you know maybe they really like like music and they are a big music lover and they're on a date and someone says I hate music that could be a red flag to them as well so there's a lot of red flags when it comes to getting in relationships with people and also you know maybe you're thinking about buying a house or moving into a house and the landlord or whoever says you know um well we do have uh some bugs in the house sometimes but it's not really a big deal you might think well that's kind of a red flag why did they say only sometimes you know maybe the problem might be bigger than they're describing just even mentioning it to you might get you worried and that's a red flag to you so that's when we mean in English when we say that something is a red flag it means it kind of makes us nervous and it's kind of a warning to us that something bigger could be wrong the red flags big red flag red flag red flag everybody when you live in the United States we have a really big government and we have lots of types of governments we have you know the federal government we have state government and we have local government with all of these governments sometimes when you want to do something like start a business build a building pay your taxes there is a lot of red tape now this phrase red tape it means there is an excessive amount of bureaucracy or a lot of paperwork or rules that you have to follow and a lot of times if there's red tape involved with doing something it just means that there's a lot of formal things that you have to do and it can kind of make things difficult to get done this phrase might be a little bit confusing so let me give you an example if you want to improve your house maybe you want to build onto your house well here in the United States typically you have to go to the local government and you have to get a building permit and you have to submit sort of plans maybe from an architect and you have to get a contractor out and they have to you know assess everything and submit more paperwork that is a lot of red tape just to do something to your house as small as adding one room or recently I had to get a new water heater in my house so we could take hot showers well we actually had to get a building permit just to get that installed in their house so that was a little bit of red tape just for something that seemed very minor just replacing one thing in the house that was already there so red tape can be a bit annoying especially here in the United States have you ever heard of someone being caught red-handed in English this phrase red-handed it means they are caught in the act or someone sees the person committing a crime or breaking their rule it's not like they figured it out later they saw you red-handed that means you were actually doing the thing that you weren't supposed to do I always think of this phrase as you know when young children want a cookie and they ask their parents and their parents say no you can't have a cookie right now the child might just you know try to sneak and grab a cookie from the cookie jar and their parent sees them doing it and they said hey no you can't have a cookie I just told you no and the kid will say oh I wasn't trying to get a cookie you might say I caught you red handed that means I saw you you doing the thing so if you see someone committing a crime you have caught them red-handed red-handed caught red-handed the last idiom in today's English lesson can be said two ways people often say the grass isn't always greener on the other side or some people say the grass is greener on the other side so this just describes a situation that you're in let me give you an example example of how this phrase the grass is it always greener on the other side can be used so some people in the United States they live places where the weather is extremely cold in the winter and they'll say geez I wish I lived somewhere that wasn't so cold in the winter some people will say to them kind of giving advice they'll say well the grass isn't greener on the other side because places that don't have this cold winter they just have a really hot and unbearable summer so this means that the other person's situation just because it's different than yours it's not always better than yours or if you wanted to say that the situation is better you could say well the grass is greener on the other side so this phrase it's more commonly used the first way I described it but it can be used both ways grass is always greener on the other side which side the grass is greener on to make a federal case out of something let's not make a federal case of this to not make a big Federal okay about it now this idiom is super interesting because in the United States you can commit a crime that's a federal crime or you commit a crime that's a State Crime now typically federal crimes carry harsher punishment in the United States so one really unique thing here is we have the United States postal system if you damage a mailbox on purpose of course you are committing a federal crime and actually even though this crime doesn't seem too crazy it can carry up to 3 years in jail and $250,000 in Fes so this is an interesting way to teach you the idiom to make a federal case out of something if someone is making a big deal out of something that you think is not a big deal it's a minor thing you can say why are you making a federal case out of this this means why are you making this such a big issue for everyone maybe when you were in school someone borrowed a pencil and another person said hey you took my pencil give me my pencil back and the person says I don't have your pencil you might say you guys don't make such a federal case out of this it's just a pencil this means don't make a big deal don't have a big fight or a big problem over this one thing that my English language students seem to have a hard time understanding when they first hear it is why American English speakers say that they're named after someone or something for me I'm named after my grandma my middle name is the same name as my grandma that means this is the way that my parents thought of this name some people are named after a city which means that their parents liked the name of a city or a place so much that they gave their child the same name so for instance some people are named Paris they you're named after the City of Paris are you named after someone or you named after something an English speaker might ask you this question and sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes no your parents just like the name especially across different cultures most cultures their names are coming from somewhere they're named after something or someone to push the envelope they didn't push the envelope kind of pushing the envelope there so when we use this idea we are not at all talking about a physical envelope or Envelope as I said before you can say this word two different ways you'll hear it said two different ways by American English speakers I think it just depends on where you're from in the United States envelope or envelope but when you say that someone is pushing the envelope it means they're going beyond the boundaries that are already ass established or they're being very Innovative for instance I always think of Lady Gaga back before she was incredibly famous she would just try to push the envelope for instance One Time Lady Gaga wore a dress that was entirely made out of meat which seems really strange but it just pushed the envelope of fashion and it made people really draw their attention to her you could say it was Innovative I would say it's a little strange but it pushed the envelope of fashion many people would say people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk push the envelope of technology in the English language we have so many ways of saying go fast one way that I thought of the other day that's super common here is to say gun it when you tell someone in a car to gun it it means go as fast as they can to push the gas pedal down as hard as they can this idiom is really typically used for just driving you wouldn't tell your friend that's running to gun it it's really just used when we're talking about pushing the gas pedal aggressively or forcefully this next phrase definitely started off in the English language as slang but nowadays it is an everyday conversation so I feel like I have to teach it to you when we say that someone is throwing shade I'm just trying to say don't throw shade in our relationship we mean that they are criticizing someone a little bit too harshly maybe you have a group of friends and one of the friends isn't there and you know let's just name her Becky your other friend Rachel says H I hate it when Becky you know comes she just thinks she's so cool don't you think that she has such a weird attitude she's throwing shade at Becky and sometimes it's not so obvious that someone is throwing shade maybe they're just being very passive aggressive you know they keep saying things like well Becky yeah Becky always does this Becky always do that they're not being super negative but you feel like they're Throwing Shade this just means you feel like they are criticizing someone passive aggressively if you want to say to someone that they need to stop criticizing you you can say can you stop throwing shade can you stop throwing shade at me that would be can you stop criticizing me or saying negative things about me sometimes in life when you have an opportunity come to you and you feel like it was really easy you didn't have to go out of your way to get that opportunity in English we say that the opportunity fell into your lap it fell into my lap just like it's going to fall into your for instance maybe a friend calls you and says hey I have two extra tickets to a concert on Friday do you want them I can't go you say well that just fell into my lap sure that means you have to go to a huge effort to buy some concert tickets or you know go online super early in the morning to try to purchase some the tickets just fell in your lap you just got them easily from a friend that didn't want them anymore sometimes in English when we're kind of criticizing someone cuz they didn't have to work for something you can say well that just fell into your lap that means you got whatever opportunity or job or whatever it might be so easily like you didn't have to work speaking speaking of working have you ever known someone who just likes to sleep the day away if we want to say that someone just sleeps way too late we often say hey don't sleep the day away now this phrase the day away we can use this with a lot of different actions we can say hey are you just reading the day away this means you're sitting and reading a book so long that the day is almost going to be gone you're going to spend all your time doing that activity sometimes times when I start cleaning it feels like I'm cleaning the day away I just cannot stop cleaning it's using up all my time in the day for crying out loud cry out loud hey you will hear Americans use this expression all the time and it's a more of a mild exclamation when you're you know a bit upset about something you're surprised about something or you're annoyed about something and it's better than saying an inappropriate swear word for instance if you're driving and the driver in front of you is going way too slow for the flow of traffic they're going well below the speed limit it'll like for crying out loud why is this person driving so slow so you'll definitely hear American speakers use this phrase when they're super annoyed at something or they're just kind of surprised for crying out loud I can't believe food has gotten so expensive like we're annoyed we can't believe it when we want to say that someone has done something a little bit too much we say that they have over done it it's better to overdo it or if we want to warn someone not to do something so much we can say don't overdo it so for instance you might tell your children don't overdo it on candy or don't overdo it on television or you could say you know I don't like my food super spicy so don't overdo the spice we use this phrase to mean don't do something excessively or too much A lot of times when you're learning a new language you don't understand why something is funny or you didn't understand why there was a joke and what a person has just said we actually have a phrase that means Justice we say we've missed the joke so sometimes you might have a joke and if a person doesn't laugh you might say oh I think you missed the joke that means you know you didn't understand why that was funny maybe there was something that happened earlier that you didn't know about or for some reason you didn't understand the joke or if you don't understand why everyone's laughing you could say hey I missed the joke what's so funny so this phrase to miss a joke means someone doesn't understand why something was funny or a joke one time I had a new job and the person who was in the same role as me before was very good at the job and so all of my new co-workers said you have big shoes to fill you have big shoes to fill following your husband like that so when you say this phrase you have big shoes to fill it's an idiom that means there are high expectations for you in this role or position or job because the person who had the position before did really good things as well often times when sports teams get a new coach if the last coach was very successful and had won a championship the fans of the team might say you have big shoes to fill in English we have two phrases that you have to know that means that someone is indecisive when someone is indecisive they cannot make a decision sometimes we say they are wishy-washy you're so wishy-washy and sometimes we say they can't make up their mind wishy-washy or saying that someone can't make up their mind it just completely means that they cannot make a decision or they cannot be sure about something a lot of times we will be critical of politicians in the United States that seem to change their decision on something and we'll say they're very wishy-washy so this term wishy-washy it's definitely used in a more negative way than saying that someone is indecisive where they can't make up their mind if you want to say almost the opposite of this last phrase you can say that someone is sticking to something you've never been able to stick to a decision oftentimes when we say that someone is very committed to a goal they are not going to quit we can say they are going to stick to their goal this means they're not going to quit or change their mind on what they want to do maybe they said they are going to lose 50 PBS by the end of the year you would say that they are sticking to their goal of losing 50 lbs by the end of the year because they're exercising every day and they are eating healthy no matter what often times in English we also say we're going to stick to our decision if we're not going to change our mind or be wishy-washy we're going to make a decision yes or no maybe our decision is yes on something and we are going to do it because we said yes we are going to stick to our decision or stick to our promise even when something has failed to meet your or expectations you can say that it was a let down you might be let down so you can use let down as a verb meaning to disappoint someone or if you want to just describe a whole situation or a whole event or even a person as disappointing you can say it is a let down maybe you watched a movie on Netflix that someone said is so good it's going to be amazing you're going to be so surprised and thrilled at the movie but when you watch the movie you actually think it's pretty boring and you stop halfway through you can say that movie was a total letdown it was a disappointment you might have heard this next phrase if you have a friend in English that uses a lot of slanging if we say we are all about something damn I forgot all about it it just means we're very enthusiastic about something and we want to do it or we agree to something and the opposite I'm not about that it just means you disapprove of it you don't want to do it or you're just not enthusiastic or excited about it for instance your friend might say what do you think about getting pizza tonight you might say I'm all about that if you love pizza or you could say I'm not about that I am on a diet I cannot be eating pizza or maybe your friend suggests going camping and you can say I am all about that I love getting outside or if you are a person that first you go on a vacation where you stay in a hotel and you don't like bugs or going outside you might say I am not about that I do not want to go camping there are two phrases that I want to bring your attention to in English that English speakers will use in their everyday conversations when they're telling a long story and they want to skip over some details and just give you a quick summary of the main point so oftentimes you will hear English speakers either say to make a long story short or long story short and another phrase that we use in English is all that to say all right all that to say yes I like Mana so we say all that to say you should never text while driving so maybe you just told a long story about someone getting in a car accident and getting injured because they were texting while they're driving and instead of telling all the details you'll maybe just summarize and say all that to say just don't text and drive so you summarize your main point after you say all that to say so like I had a long story but here's the main point so we'll say that or sometimes we say long story short another informal phrase that we'll use in English and this phrase is you know there's not a certain definition of this but you'll hear it in a lot of different contexts it's to bust out something you can't bust out of here so when someone brings an item out that they either haven't had out and shown people in a long time or you know they're just being very extravagant and extra when they bring it out we say they're busting it out so for instance if your dad or your brother or someone in your family plays the guitar but they don't play every day maybe only on special occasions and finally they bring out the guitar and they sing wonder wall you can say ah my dad just bust out the guitar again that means you know he brought it out and wanted a lot of attention sometimes parents will bust out old photos when you have a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend at your house just to kind of embarrass you and you know show them these old things that they don't normally have out to see but they're busting them out they're showing them and it's kind of extravagant and extra another really funny way to use this phrase is we say like where did you bust out those moves this means like when someone starts dancing and you've never seen them dance before you can say where did you bust out those moves they're really dancing and they're really into the song or sometimes we say just Bust A Move which means you know someone is dancing in a really extra and extravagant way so this phrase to bust out you'll hear a ton in English conversation in everyday conversation if you ever watch advertisements or commercials in English you'll often hear the speak here say something is right around the corner right right right around the corner to the right as you go out the door so we're not talking about a physical location when we say it's right around the corner but we mean that something is coming up in a short amount of time so a lot of times in advertisements they'll say Christmas is right around the corner this means I want you to anticipate Christmas because it's coming up very soon on the calendar or you might say to someone you know graduate ation is right around the corner have you thought about what you want to do with your career so because you're going to graduate from college in such a short amount of time it's important that you anticipate what you're going to do for a job next if you ever want to ask someone's opinion on something in English in a very casual way you might ask someone what's your take what's your take on all this honestly so when you use this phrase what's your take it just means the exact same thing what's your opinion on this or sometimes we say do you want to hear my take this means do you want to hear my opinion or my view of the situation here sometimes on podcasts I hear the host say you know I have a hot take on this this means that they have a controversial opinion on something or a very original opinion on something that not a lot of other people might share in a business situation your boss might say you know now that I've told you guys how I feel about this I want to hear all of your takes on it this means all of your opinions so in English we can use take and opinion interchangeably I would say take is a bit more casual but it's becoming more and more popular in everyday speech you may have heard an English speaker before warn someone to not get ahead of themselves don't get ahead of yourself this phrase is used to to caution someone of being too confident about a situation so for instance maybe your friend starts dating someone else and your friend is very excited about this new relationship and they're already thinking about their future marriage and their future children you might want to say hey don't get ahead of yourself you're not even sure if you guys are going to go out on another date or officially become boyfriend girlfriend so you're telling the person you know don't assume that these future events are going to happen or maybe you know someone's really excited about a new job and they're like I am going to be the boss of this company someday you'll say hey don't get ahead of yourself like have your first day and see if you like the situation first before you start planning out your entire future based off getting this job so the phrase is don't get ahead of yourself it's good advice to give to someone who's planning out way too far in advance even though you know a lot of things aren't certain or for sure yet there are so many idioms in the English language that have to do with cards or card games or gambling even this next phrase is if you play your cards right could be you play your cards right now you're telling someone if they make wise decisions then something will happen often something very positive for them so if you play your cards right you you might get to go on vacation soon if you want to tell someone you know they should be nice to you because then you might do them a favor you might say if you play your card right I might buy you dinner this means like if you're nice to me if you're polite I'll I'll pay for your dinner so you're saying you know you have to act good in order to have this thing happen so if someone has a job and they're saying I hope I can get a promotion soon you might say to them hey if you play your cards right you will for sure get a promotion or a better job by the end of the year this is a very very common phrase when you do something across the board it means it affects everyone equally get across the board over time and across the board you could say everyone in my house enjoys cheeseburgers across the board that means Everyone likes them so much it's my favorite food in my family for instance now you could use this phrase in other ways as well you could say everyone in the company got a raise across the board that means everyone working in the company from people who are janitors to people who are CEOs they all got raise because the company is doing well it just means in total you could say it was not across the board this means not everyone got a raise or you could say not everybody likes cheeseburgers across the board in my house so not everyone equally likes a thing so so you can use this phrase in a positive way or a negative way this next phrase the bottom line it's very important in business and it's also very important if you're having an argument with a native English speaker if you're having an argument with someone over something let's say you are not a very clean person and your roommate is a very clean person and they're kind of mad at you because you're not picking up after yourself they might say the bottom line is you need to start helping around the house too so this means this is their most important part this is the reason that they're mad if you've been arguing for a long time someone might say well the bottom line is this is the main problem in business we say what's the bottom line to mean how much money are we going to make off this deal maybe you are going to have some expenses in your company regarding a project so they're going to take away some of the profit or some of the money that you would normally make you can say it's going to affect our bottom line which means the money or the profit that we're going to make and usually we use this phrase in this way in a negative way like it's affecting the bottom line or the money that we make in a negative way this next phrase is very crucial to know if you want to say that it is important to do something fast or it's important to do something soon sooner rather than later the phrase is time is of the essence and I just love the way this phrase sounds when I say it time is of the essence in a business email if you want to politely tell someone that they need to do something quickly because you're relying on their response or you're relying on their work to finish the project you could simply add in your email please complete this as soon as possible time is of the essence this just means time is very important it's important to do this quickly if people are trapped in a building and the building is on fire time is of the essence for firefighters to get there and get people out before they are injured or before they have you know too much smoke in their house time is of the essence that means they have to do it quickly if you have kids you have maybe been frustrated with them before and this phrase in English would be super useful so if your kids are fighting you might say enough is enough this needs to stop enough is enough enough is enough we typically say enough is enough when we want a behavior to stop because we are so frustrated with it you can be frustrated with something else too and use this phrase for instance in the winter here in the United States where I live it snows so much and at the end of the winter if it snows and snows and snows I just start saying oh enough is enough when is spring going to start and when is the weather going to warm up because I am frustrated with the snow and I'm frustrated with the cold weather often times this next idiom rapid fire is used when you're asking someone questions really quickly so you might say I'm just going to Rapid Fire ask you some questions here this means I'm just going to ask you what's going to come to my mind really quickly you don't have to provide super detailed respon because these questions are going to be so quick it's like you're throwing something at them really fast if you want to say that someone is going to have no consequences for something that they did that was bad you can say they got off scott free well not Scott free we got to away Scott free now this phrase Scot free we don't use really in any other instance in the English language unless we want to say that someone has no consequences for a crime or just a negative thing that they did for instance some people say that OJ Simpson got off scott free when he was tried for murder they might say this if they believe that he was guilty and he was proven innocent in court and he never had to go to jail so he got off scott free this next idiom is very useful if you want to tell someone that they should be happier or or if you want to describe someone as happy you can say they are perky if you want to tell them to be happy you can say oh perk up or I hope you perk up soon so sometimes we use this when we're talking with a friend but a lot of times too we'll say that when an animal starts to act happy and excited they are perking up this means they're starting to be happy they're getting perky which is an adjective and a really interesting adjective in the English language when someone is sick and they are low energy when they start to feel better we often say that they are perking up or they're getting more energy and they're improving in their mood R me this if you don't have any money then why are you out sha the phrase riddle mean this is used when we are asking someone a question that we are confused about this phrase is a little tongue and cheek which just means it's you know it's playful we're trying to give some attitude when we use this phrase or we can say riddle me this when we're asking someone a confusing question you could say riddle me this what's black and white and red all over a newspaper so you're asking someone a riddle and if you don't get that one a newspaper is printed in black and white but you read it with your eyes which in the past tense is red it's red all over so it's supposed to be a challenging riddle or question question if you are asking someone a ton of questions really aggressively or intensely they might ask you in English why are you giving me the third degree and in English we consider third degree to be the most harsh of something so for instance if you get a third degree burn on your arm it's a very bad burn from fire or something hot that damages your skin quite deeply so if someone you live with maybe it's your mom maybe it's your brother maybe it's your boyfriend girlfriend husband wife whoever is like where are you going who are you going with what time are you going to be home and you are just irritated with all of these questions that they're asking you because they're being so aggressive and they're just asking for way too much information if you know them pretty well use this phrase say why are you giving me the third degree that means just stop asking me so many questions so aggressive Poss L have you ever hit a rough patch in life when we use this phrase to hit a rough patch it means just a period of time that's difficult often when people are dating or they're married and they're having a lot of arguments and they're just not enjoying their relationship very much but then they get over it and they get along again you could say that they had just hit a rough patch and things got better sometimes people in life will just have a rough pth in general maybe something happens you lose your job you get sick or you know a Lov one in your family is having issues you could say it's just a rough patch in life just means a challenging part of life you will hear native English speakers use this phrase a rough patch very frequently there are so many idioms that are used to say that something is complete or finished one of my favorite idioms is to say That's All She Wrote That's All She Wrote cool that's all she wrote it's a very casual phrase and it's a very playful phrase in the English language and it just means that's it it's all done and it's often used when something ends abruptly or something runs out abruptly sometimes at night I tell my children bedtime stories and they'll say one more Story one more story I will say oh That's All She Wrote it's all done this is just a playful way to say I am out of stories it's time for bed have you ever blown off a responsibility I hope not and definitely don't blow off studying English this phrase to blow off something means to ignore a responsibility or a job or task that you have to do if your friend wants to get coffee with you or go out to dinner with you and they text you and you never respond you're just blowing them off this means you're being rude and you're ignoring them so often times in the English language we use this phrase to mean ignoring someone or ignoring something such as a responsibility so you could say I had to blow off doing laundry today this means I had to ignore my laundry even though it's a really important task that I have to do I have to clean my clothes and fold them and put away I just blew off the task one English phrase that I really like to use in my everyday conversations is to change your tune if you say someone changes their tune you're not always talking about singing when you use this idiom you use this idiom to say that someone has drastically changed their opinion or attitude towards something if you have a friend and you say are you going to our other friend's wedding and they say no I hate weddings I'm not going and then the next day they say well I can't wait to go to their wedding you could say wow you really changed your tune this means you changed your attitude and your opinion of weddings really quickly in English sometimes we'll say I'm going to summarize this but sometimes in a casual English conversation we'll say I'm going to spare you the details that means I'm going to tell you this really quick like a summary and often times we use this phrase I'm going to spare you the details when we have a really long story that's not that important and we don't really want to tell you often times we are going to spare someone the gruesome details if you say that you're going to spare someone the gruesome details it means you're going to spare them or not tell them the gross parts of the story we use this when we're talking about someone getting sick or someone getting hurt very badly I'll spare you the gruesome details that means I'll tell you the story quickly but I'm not going to tell you the gross Parts Hit or Miss if you want to describe something that does not have consistent quality you can say it's hit or miss some restaurants have hit or miss food that means it's either a hit which means it's very good in the United States when we want to say that something is very popular and great and awesome we can say it's a hit or it's a Miss which we typically don't say things are a Miss but in this phrase we just say it's a hit or a miss a Miss meaning very bad so some pizza places will have the best pizza when you go depending on who's cooking it it might be a Miss which means it will be very bad if you go to a market or a grocery store to buy fruit sometimes the fruit will have a really good quality it will be delicious and fresh and sometimes it will be old and starting to get rotten so we could say the fruit is Hit or Miss at the grocery store sometimes instead of saying that that it's not a big deal to do something and the United States will say well it's not a crime one example I can think of is if someone is indecisive this means they can't decide on something they'll say I like chocolate and V I can't decide which piece of cake I want you could say well it's not a crime to have both this just means you know there's nothing bad about having both like you don't have to decide so if you want to tell someone that something isn't bad or it's not a big deal you can say well it's not a crime and this is just a playful way to tell them that they can do something that they might think is bad but you're saying it's okay A really useful phrase in English is to say read between the lines read between the lines Theo yeah but read between the lines this phrase means that even though someone is doing something or saying something you can just kind of tell from the context or the subliminal things that they're saying that they mean something else or they're kind of revealing a secret if you read between the lines if you have a friend and they say well I just want to go window shopping today I don't I don't want to spend any money you know I don't actually need anything you might read between the lines if you know them pretty well and just the context of the situation and you say I think they maybe just don't have a lot of money right now maybe they're a bit poor now of course you might want to say this to your friend's face but if you're reading between the lines it means that you're able to understand something that the person did not directly say to go hand in hand hand in hand hand in shoter now when people walk together we say they're walking hand in hand if they are holding hands in our everyday English conversations we want to say that two things go together very nicely we say they go hand in hand for instance practicing English every day and speaking like a native English speaker go hand in hand because the more you practice the better that you will sound sometimes we don't just use this with verbs if you've had too much of a food let's say you've had a ton of candy you've been eating candy all day and someone says hey do you want some of these M&M's or do you want some of these Skittles you can say no I am candied out for the day that means you can't eat any more candy so if you are confused at why an English speaker is saying you know a noun with the Ed suffix or you hear someone say I'm hiked out or I'm walked out or I'm run out and you're like that doesn't sound right it's because we're speaking in this way and it's like an idiom the way we use it it just means you're exhausted you don't want to do the action or have that thing anymore normally when we use the verb find or to find we're talking about looking for someone that is lost or looking for something that is lost now sometimes the way that we speak in English we use this verb to find in a totally different way so if you think that someone is funny you can say I find them funny this means you know you think that they're funny they are funny to you or you could say you know I've never really found them funny this means they don't seem funny to you so we use to find with an adjective to describe the way that we perceive someone or something if you are someone who has never really enjoyed Taylor Swift's music you could say I don't really find her talented this means she's not talented to you in your opinion or a lot of times if we're in a situation we say oh I really am finding this to be enjoyable or you could say I don't find this to be enjoyable this means you don't like it so we can say you know we're finding someone a certain quality or adjective or we can say we find this thing a certain adjective like funny or we find this ugly we find this pretty we find this to be boring things like that so this verb to find in this phrase is super super useful in English when I was in college when I was a college student I would always say I cannot wait for the day that I graduate I cannot wait well as quick as you possibly can quicker please so this phrase to wait for the day or you cannot wait for the day it just means you're extremely extremely excited for something to happen and you're anticipating it sometimes when someone is judging you and they're judging you in a negative way you might say I cannot wait for the day when this thing that you're judging me for happens to you for instance you know maybe you have a baby and they're crying and someone's looking at you like H why is your baby crying in public in the United States a lot of people have a huge problem with babies crying in public even though you know they're just babies but you might say h I cannot wait for the day when you have kids and they are crying in public this just means you know I can't wait for this to happen to you because you know you won't be judging the situation as harshly so we say this you know when we're you know wanting something to happen to someone so that they don't judge the situation and we also say I can't wait for the day when we're excited about something maybe you'll say I cannot wait for the day that we go on vacation just means you're very excited and you're anticipating your vacation have you ever heard of an Easter egg and if you do happen to find that Easter egg there's a bonus of course in the United States Easter is a holiday that some people celebrate religiously and there's also a nonreligious aspect to Easter where we tell children the story of an Easter buddy coming and bringing eggs with little prizes and candies inside and getting an Easter basket with some gifts inside as well it's kind of a strange tradition but sometimes we use that term Easter egg to mean that there are things inside of a movie or a video game that reference something else outside of the movie the television show or the video game when I think of Easter eggs in this context I think of the Disney and Pixar movies because a lot of times those movies will have little items in the background of the movie that reference the other movies for instance in Finding Nemo there are a ton of Easter eggs that reference other Pixar movies if you've seen The Incredibles there is a newspaper with Mr Incredible on the front that a kid is reading inside the dentist's office in Finding Nemo if you haven't seen these movies I recommend it because even though they're children's movies they are so entertaining and if you've watched them before you could watch them again and learn some English while reading the captions or the subtitles so an Easter egg is just something that you know the dialogue of a movie or a television show they're not talking about it but it's just something in the background that references something else it's a really interesting vocabulary term sometimes in English we say things twice in slang to kind of emphasize something and this next idiom that I'm going to teach you is another example of that when you want to ask someone if they are being serious because what they said is either so shocking and surprising or you're just you don't really believe it instead of just saying are you serious you might say are you for real and sometimes as slang we'll say for real for real is this for real like for real for real so we'll just repeat the phrase twice for real for real for real this just means like seriously this is actually what happened for real for real another instance in English where we kind of use this repeating is when you like someone in a romantic way you might say I like like them just means like you you really like them in a romantic way not just as a friend I like them as a friend no I like like them so this repeating thing is really interesting in English I know a lot of other languages use this as well officially in English it's just slang though for real for real have you ever been in a situation where you are so busy with so many different things going on in your life maybe you have a family to take care of you have a job job you have a house you have family members that need taken care of older family members and you just have so many things going on you just think to yourself that you have to change something or the situation just isn't going to be good you know people are going to suffer in English we have a phrase for this exact situation we say something has got to give cuz if you do that to God's creatures long enough something's got to get this means there has to be a compromise somewhere you have to you know stop doing something for someone or you're not going to be able to take care of all your responsibilities sometimes when we're frustrated with someone we'd say h something's got to give or I'm just going to get so angry and upset that I'm not going to be able to continue on working with you or having this relationship or whatever it might be a lot of times people have a lot of financial obligations and they get themselves into debt they owe a lot of people money and they have to stop spending money somewhere something's got to give or you know all these people are going to be collecting their debt and you're going to have no money to try to pay them so when we say something's got to give in English it just means that we have to make a compromise somewhere we have to stop doing something or the situation cannot continue on and be a good situation sometimes when something very tragic or sad happens to you or you have a fear of something you have to keep going in life and you have to you know change the way you feel or stop being so sad in English we say that we are over something when we get past these types of feelings I don't know if anyone could ever totally get over something like that for instance if someone dies or you lose a pet maybe you're pet dog dies and you feel sad for a very long time and you feel like you can't even see other dogs because it just makes you so sad finally you stop having these feelings and in English we say we're over it we are over our dog's death or maybe you're very very scared of giving a speech in front of other people and you practice and practice and practice until finally you don't feel scared anymore you can say I am over my fear so to be over with something we usually say we're over a certain feeling a negative feeling and we can move past it and start doing what we wanted to do or stop feeling a bad feeling it's a scam I don't even want to change a scam so what's the scam B you take this whole thing's a scam I hope that you've never been scammed but it happens so frequently and in English when something is fake or or someone tries to kind of steal something from you by being deceptive we call that a scam so someone might lie to you and say hey this is an actual iPhone it's the best iPhone ever um just you know give me $100 and I'll sell this iPhone to you well it turns out that it's either not a real iPhone or they just take your money and don't give you anything we call this a scam and if we want to say that a person is you know kind of a liar and they're likely to scam you or sometimes we say rip you off which means basically the same thing as a scam you know they try to sell you something or take your money somehow we say that they are a scammer a lot of times on the telephone people call you and you know say like your computer is being taken over if you don't give us $100 you know your computer's going to have all these viruses that is usually a scam it's actually always a scam no one will ever call you and ask you to give them money if it's not a scam if you want to tell someone that they don't need to worry about something you can say there's no need to worry well there's no need to worry no need to worry no need to worry if you want to tell someone that there's no reason to have to hurry up or go fast or quickly you could say there's no need to rush this phrase there's no need to and then you insert the verb it's a really useful phrase in English we use this all all the time when we want to reassure someone that they don't have to do something it's not required of them if you want to tell someone at work that they don't have to worry about doing something they can just relax or they can work on something else because you've already done the project or the task you can say there's no need to worry about the report I've already submitted or if you want to tell someone you know I'm coming to pick you up but we are not in a hurry we have plenty of time you can say there's no need to rush we have plenty of time so this phrase there's no need to it's incredibly popular in English make sure you add it to your English vocabulary it is what it is it is what it is it is what it is often times in English when people feel like you know they don't have to work any harder because they can't change the situation or they can't change the outcome or they say ah sorry it's like this people say well it is what it is this is just a very way to say let's just accept this situation because we can't really change anything about it so maybe it's raining outside and you and your friends we're going to enjoy the day and have a picnic and say it is what it is at least we can spend some time together inside so that means we can't change weather it is what it is but we can still do this fun thing so oftentimes we follow it is what it is with a positive aspect or sometimes we call it a silver lining of the situation a silver lining is just a positive thing that has to do with a negative situation and if you want to know more color idioms like that one silver lining make sure to check out my last idiom video that is all about color idioms a lot of my English Learners have found this video super useful as well but let's keep going with these 25 phrases that you absolutely need to know too to be frazzled you know what I I'm feeling a little less frazzled I thought okay so in English this is an awesome idiom because it combines a lot of different feelings it combines being stressed overwhelmed tired instead of just saying all of those things we can say I'm sorry I'm just so razzled and this kind of reminds me of fris if you've ever heard the word Friz in English it describes when someone's hair is all puffed up and messy like frizzy instead of saying frizzy to describe the feeling of just being like messy over WellMed tired say h I'm just I'm frazzled so you don't want to be frazzled it's usually a negative feeling if you say you're frazzle when my kids are running around screaming they have nothing to do I feel really frazzled I'm like everyone sit down let's play a game let's do something I just try to organize the situation that's going on if you're in the workplace and you have a meeting and then just a 5 minute break and then another meeting and then another meeting you might start to feel frazzled because you've had no no time to eat a meal or get organized or figure out you know what's on the schedule for the day you might just feel overwhelmed and stressed or frazzled have you heard this next idiom it's a really really interesting one to spill one's guts now you know this American idiom spilled one's guts so if you want to say I'm going to spill my guts to you has nothing to do with the inside of your body it's more of revealing some truth or revealing how you actually feel about a situation so often times when people go to therapy it just feels good to spill their guts to their therapist and that just means to tell them all of you know how they feel about everything maybe some things that they would normally keep a secret it just feels good to spill your guts and tell someone exactly how you feel about things that you normally wouldn't say or if you want to tell someone you know tell me exactly how you feel like well spill your guts let's hear it so this phrase it just means reveal how you actually feel or kind Reveal Your Secrets and your secret feelings to show up uninvited they always show up uninvited people show up uninvited for dinner have you ever had a guest show up at a party or a meeting and no one really wanted them there they showed up uninviting they showed up uninvited so this phrase is very useful when you have a guest that you literally didn't invite you didn't want them there you can say well they showed up uninvited a lot of times in English instead of saying that we're confused we'll use this next idiom we'll say that we have brain fog prinston like a fog brain fog describes that feeling when you just can't really focus on anything you can't really think of the right answer to something you're just all confused and you're not really focused on things if I stay up way too late and I don't get enough sleep the next day I will have brain fog I will be making mistakes all of the time I'll just be confused and I can't really think very well if I stay up too late because I have brain fog so brain fog isn't an actual medical condition but it's just an idiom that we use to describe feeling confused or kind of tired and you just can't think very clearly on the other hand if you're feeling very tense very nervous and very anxious sometimes we say that we feel on edge I'm completely on edge right now so if you have a big presentation coming up and you're feeling really nervous and you know somebody asks you are you nervous for your presentation tomorrow and you get kind of angry at them for even asking about it or bringing the topic up you can say I'm sorry I'm just I'm on edge because I am nervous about my presentation or if someone is acting really you know angry they're you know giving you rude responses and you think that they're just stressed out you can say it's okay she's just on Edge or he's just on edge that's why he's acting so angry and rude to ramble or often we say in English to Ramble On You just going to Ramble On when someone is just talking and talking and talking and talking and they're not really making a lot of sense or they're just talking about things that you don't really care about you can describe that as someone rambling or you could say they're rambling on or if you are talking to someone and you don't want to talk too much you'll say I'm gonna I'll just I don't want to ramble right now this means you don't want to just keep talking for no reason sometimes when people are nervous they tend to Ramble On or just keep talking even though they don't have many important things to say they're just talking because they feel nervous they're rambling or maybe you've known someone that it seems like they just like to talk maybe they're kind of lonely you can call them a r yeah they kind of ramble so I don't want to talk to them for too long cuz if people ramble often times we're saying that the things that they're talking about aren't very important they're just talking to have a conversation and to keep you around the next phrase in English is a little bit tricky for my students to understand sometimes in English we say they aren't the type Veronica you are not the type how would you know so we're saying they don't have this type of characteristic or this personality so if you know someone that's very shy maybe they like to stay in and play video games they don't really like to go to parties you can say they're not really the type to go out on Friday nights this means you know that's not their personality because they are quite the opposite actually or if you're surprised by someone's Behavior because they don't typically have the personality or the characteristics to be doing that sort of thing you can say I'm surprised you're at the concert right now you're not the type to enjoy crowds this can be you know a way we use the phrase or if we're really surprised and we want to doubt that someone did something we could say Well they're not usually the type to lie this means they are very honest and I would be surprised if they lied this next phrase is used when you strongly dislike something or you don't want to wear something or you don't want to be in a place you can say I wouldn't be Dead doing the thing I wouldn't be caught dead with someone's stupid enough to drive that car or I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a dress or I wouldn't be caught dead going to a concert this just means that whatever action or place you're talking about you would not do it it's not like you at all and you're actually probably pretty against it so maybe you are super super healthy and you believe that eating all sugar is very bad you could say I wouldn't be caught dead eating a piece of cake so this is a very dramatic expression that we like to use in English but we use it a lot be caught dead doing that maybe you wouldn't be caught dead in doing it because you are embarrassed by whatever thing or whatever place it is when you want to say that everyone is acting normal even though there's kind of a weird circumstance or event going on you can say well things are business as usual today yeah sure business as usual huh maybe there's a holiday but you are still expected to work your boss might say I know that it is Valentine's Day President's Day coming up which are two really small holidays in the United States and not everybody gets those days off of work your boss might say I know it's a holiday but it's business as usual today or sometimes in the United States when we get big snowstorms we sometimes cancel school but sometimes it's just business as usual the teacher might say I know it's snowing outside but it's business as usual let's get back to our study if you've ever met someone who won't take responsibility for a mistake or they won't take responsibility for a job they're supposed to do and they just you know make you do it instead in English we have a very specific way of saying this we say they're going to turn it around on you I'm try to turn it around on me if you meet someone who you know makes a big mistake and they say oh it's all your fault they're turning it around on you or often times if we're in an argument with someone they you know turn everything in the situation back onto you so they say oh you're actually a bad friend or you did this mistake it's not me so turning something around on someone else we use this phrase just to say like they're shifting blame or they're shifting a negative situation that should be about one person to the other person so don't turn the argument around on me that's just an example of how we might use this phrase when we're having an argument and we don't want someone to start saying negative things to us the plot has thickened but the plot thickens this next idiom I'm hearing more and more in everyday conversations with my friends right now and we use this phrase to mean that you know things have just gotten interesting maybe there's some drama or there's some detail that makes a situation kind of mysterious or more interesting you definitely can use this phrase the plot has thickened if you're reading a book or if you're watching a movie and something really interesting or mysterious happens we talk about the plot as being the story or the problem in a movie or in a book so if we're saying that the story or the plot has thickened we mean it's gotten more interesting and in our everyday life if you know you're trying to figure out um who stole something and you're pretty sure it's one person but then you find some evidence or some new detail that suggests it's a different person so now nobody knows who stole the thing that you're looking for you could say well the plot has thickened we don't know who it was this just means it has become more interesting or more mysterious speaking of mysteries this next idiom would be very useful as well when we were talking about Mysteries or problem so sometimes in English we describe solving a problem as putting the pieces together you'll put the pieces together for her or you can say putting the puzzle pieces together especially if you're talking about solving a crime or a mystery you're taking different pieces of evidence and putting them together putting the pieces together so often times when there's a car accident they will ask you know the driver of one car would happen the driver of the other car what happen the look at the physical evidence of each car and they'll put the pieces together to decide whose fault it was that there was a car crash or a car accident or sometimes you might meet someone new and they're describing some things about their life and you're like H it sounds like maybe they were married before and they got divorced but they didn't tell you directly this so you just kind of are guessing based on them saying oh well my ex-husband d d you say I put the pieces together and I figured out you know they're not married anymore they got divorced this just means you're kind of solving something without someone directly telling you the detail or the thing about themselves have you ever met someone in life that just really rolls with the punches roll with the punches tomorrow's another day this next idiom means that someone is very flexible and they can react to a lot of different setbacks or surprises in life if you're at work and someone says you know we're having all these problems with this technology we can't get to work we can't get this project done you can say it's okay we'll just roll with the punches and we'll do our best to get everything done even though there's some problems so this is suggesting you know you're very laid-back you're very flexible and you're not going to be angered or worried when there are some problems when you're trying to get something done so when you say that someone just rolls with the punches this is typically describing them very positively like they can get stuff done even if there's problems or setback this next phrase be very careful with because if you use it in the wrong context it could potentially be pretty offensive so the phrase is shut up or put up shut up Alan so the phrase shut up itself is quite offensive in English if you tell someone to shut up it's very very rude it's considered rude and if you're trying to be harsh and rude of course use this phrase and make sure that you know you know the person pretty well you know they won't react to it too harsh if you use it the phrase shut up or put up it is telling someone to stop criticizing something or complaining about something unless they are going to take action to fix the thing or make something better so shut or put up so you might encounter someone that is complaining about how you're cleaning and you might say well shut up or put up clean it yourself or stop complaining a really common idiom that's used in English to say like why am I confused what information did I not hear is what am I missing here what am I missing here I was listening to a podcast the other day and the speaker said everyone seemed so happy and I was so miserable I was thinking what am I missing here so this is just saying like what don't I understand why am I missing something that makes everyone else happy in the same situation or if you read something and you can't figure out why the person thought you know this plan would work you could say I've read your plan several times and I just don't think it will work what am I missing here so this is like am I missing some sort of information or detail that will make this plan make sense and sometimes when you ask this question to someone it seems really obvious oh you're missing this you didn't realize that you know we have to do it this way or something so this question can really help us clarify a situation in English have you ever heard someone say in English that they got a wakeup call I'm not a shrink B I'm a wakeup call so the literal meaning of this is someone calls your phone in order to make sure you wake up just like an alarm clock so you can request this when you're staying at a hotel but often times in English we also use this as an idiom to mean that we had something in life that made us realize our priorities so for instance maybe you got laid off or fired from your job and you could say well getting laid off from my job actually turned out to be a wakeup call cuz I realize I needed to spend more time with my family and less time on work or often times when people have poor health and they realize you know life is pretty terrible when you don't have good health it's a wakeup call to them and they start living a more healthy lifestyle in English instead of saying we are going to keep a secret often times we say we are going to keep something to ourselves you keep to yourself why are you arresting him this means we're not going to tell everyone the information it's going to be a secret or if you want to tell someone you know don't tell everyone this you know keep it very quiet you can say keep it to yourself if you are engaged to be married or if you're pregnant you're going to have a baby often times you will tell someone the exciting news and you'll they'll say keep it to yourself cuz we haven't told everyone yet so you want to have the chance to tell everyone personally your exciting news or secret or if you trust someone you can say I trust that they will keep it to themselves a lot of times in English when you are going to have a meeting with someone in order to talk about some details of something or to plan something out you can say we are going to have a meeting to talk specifics can't really talk specifics but so this phrase just means like we're not just going to talk generally we're actually going to plan out every detail every specific detail of the plan or the trip or whatever it might be if you want to say that someone has agreed to a deal but you haven't you know worked out every single detail you can say well they agreed but we haven't talked specifics yet so this phrase is very useful in English when you have only talked about something generally and not specifically yet you can say well talk specifics later or you can ask someone do you want to get dinner with me and they'll say sure and you'll say well okay we'll talk specifics later that means we'll plan out the details of where we're eating and when we're eating and who's driving to the restaurant later being polite while you're speaking English is very important just like in any other language or culture and if you want to tell someone that they need to be careful about the way that they're speaking either to another person or to yourself you can say hey watch your tone hey watch your tone just came this means don't speak so rudely so instead of saying don't be rude we say watch your tone that means don't speak to me rudely often times if you're watching a movie or a TV show the mom will say to the children watch your tone that means you know don't give me attitude or don't be rude to me be very respectful and polite have you ever fallen Head Over Heels in love with someone that I'll fall head over heels for Joe so this idiom head over heels it means that someone is very in love or very infatuated with someone so we often use this phrase head over heels in love we use those two phrases together or sometimes we just say I'm head over heels for them that means you're very very infatuated or pretty in love with someone now we typically don't use this phrase Head Over Heels when two people have been happily married for a long time time we use this phrase when people have just met and they instantly fall in love so at the very beginning of a relationship is when we say two people are head over heels for one another a must know phrase in English is to not miss a beat didn't miss a beat or we often say the person didn't miss a beat so I think of this idiom as coming from the idea that when someone plays music if they play it perfectly they don't miss any beats on the measure of music that they're playing in life when there's something surprising or kind of confusing but it doesn't make you make a mistake you can say well that it make me miss a beat or if someone you know reacted to a situation really well and you know you wouldn't have known that there was any problem going on you could say they did not miss a beat for instance maybe someone at your work quits but everyone still is getting all the work done and nobody's missing any deadlines you could say we did not miss a beat even though Sally quit last week

Channel: English With Kayla

Views: 99,286

Keywords: english learning, advanced idioms, english with kayla, long english lessons, learn english phrases, daily english, english for conversation, learn english with kayla, learn idioms

Id: o4IiputsC64

Length: 168min 27sec (10107 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024