20 of the Funniest English Phrases and Idioms to Make you Laugh!

hey guys and welcome back to love english i'm sabra and it's been a long time i haven't seen you guys for a while as a lot of you know i recently had a baby girl her name is safira and she might just be making an appearance in this lesson today but you'll have to watch the end to find out now today we're looking at some of the funniest british phrases and idioms now these are phrases which when you hear them you might think that they don't really make sense they sound a bit strange but in fact they are phrases which we use all the time you probably won't find them in a textbook but they are phrases that make up the fabric of english conversation and i promise you you are very unlikely to have heard of some of these so this vocabulary is going to be new new news so number one is nitty gritty the nitty gritty we often say now this is a phrase which means the facts or the finer details the heart of something so for example imagine somebody is trying to sell you car insurance they are telling you about the benefits of car insurance and things like that but they're not telling you the facts about the cost and how long you need to sign up for the finer details here you could say well this is all great but i need to know more about the nitty-gritty or let's get down to the nitty-gritty another example would be my teacher only tells us about the concepts of grammar she doesn't get down to the nitty-gritty of how to make a sentence using that grammar number two is mumbo jumbo it's a funny phrase which means language which seems to be deliberately confusing so very often when you buy something new or when you purchase a service or things like that like for example again car insurance or buying a new car or hiring a lawyer often that will come with a lot of extra information some of it seems to be deliberately confusing some of it seems to be very complicated so we might say oh i just couldn't read all that legal mumbo jumbo basically you're saying it didn't make sense for me or you might say what that politician was saying on the tv seemed a load of mumbo jumbo which means nonsense deliberately confusing i can think of a very recent politician who is no longer in office who spoke a lot of mumbo jumbo can you think of something recently where you thought something sounded like mumbo jumbo if you can then feel free to tell me about that in the comments below number three this is a particularly funny one this one is willy nilly now willy nilly means without order in a chaotic way um so for example if you are the kind of person who doesn't organize your clothes very well so perhaps when you go to bed for the evening you throw your clothes off and you don't unpack them and put them away then you put your clothes away willy-nilly or you put your things away willy-nilly meaning everywhere without order in a chaotic manner obviously this is slightly funnier because of course willie does mean the male anatomy so it has an extra layer of being a little bit funny it's a very innocent word so it's not really a rude word but still the phrase willy nilly is quite funny so you could say i don't want to drive around willy-nilly today let's have a clear plan of where we're going yeah so i would gather all these words up like um like willy-nilly nitty-gritty do you sometimes get to be pretty not the nitty gritty number four is hullabaloo hullabaloo so a little bit difficult to say that one you can say it with me a hullabaloo now this actually is partially a scottish word so it's derived from scotland and basically this word means a fuss a a lot of attention um quite a big kind of scene around something so for example we might say there's been a big hullabaloo in the press during the american election there's been lots of attention lots of energy and sometimes it can suggest chaos a fuss as well we might say so lots of energy and attention on that quite frequently it's used to describe negative situations so imagine at work your boss suddenly tells you that there's going to be some redundancies and so staff know that there's going to be redundancies and they're probably feeling very nervous and they're shocked so we could say there was a big hullabaloo when the manager announced that there would be staff redundancies help somebody help me would starve it's hollow help help number five bits and bobs bits and bobs oh fantastic phrase now this is used a lot in britain i'm not sure about the states i'll check that out for you but bits and bobs means small items or items which are part of something but the smaller parts so for example if i say i went shopping and i bought some bits and bobs i mean i bought small things nothing significant or i need to buy some milk and some other bits and bobs it means other bits and pieces not like doing a big shop for example or you could say i need to sort out my drawers there's lots of different things in it small things which you know need to be packed away bits and bobs really number five is dilly dally dilly dally now to dilly dally is to hesitate or to be indecisive it's to waste time really not making a decision or getting on with what you need to get on with so you might say i was dilling and dallying when i was doing my christmas shopping i couldn't really decide what to buy and so i i didn't really buy a lot in the end or i might say my students were dillying and dallying in class today they just didn't seem to be getting on or really focusing on their revision it's something which parents often say to children we might say come on stop dilling and dallying get on with your homework or get on with tidying your room number six is wishy-washy wishy-washy um very common phrase actually that we use which means when something is not clear we would say oh the plans for this are a bit wishy-washy i didn't really get um a true sense of what they were talking about it seemed a bit unclear to me a bit wishy-washy so i could say to a student the problem with your essay was that it was a bit wishy-washy your main idea didn't seem to be clear or the prime minister's plans for the economy seemed a bit wishy-washy there didn't seem to be too much substance to them they seemed a bit wishy-washy number seven an absolutely fantastic word it's very funny when you say it in english shenanigans shenanigans means things that are not necessarily good bad actions or mischievous actions so if you say hmm what shenanigans have you been doing or what shenanigans have you been up to it can mean what actions that are not necessarily good for our mischievous have you been doing so you might say they found out later that there was a lot of illegal shenanigans going on in that company number eight is tip top tip top and as you can probably guess this means the best of the best so if you say oh that meal in that restaurant was tip top you mean it was the best of the best absolutely delicious or you could say the service in that hotel is tip top again the best of the best so nice easy one to remember guys if something is extremely high quality or really enjoyable you can say that was tip top number nine now this one is an idiom this is the bee's knees and i included it as it's particularly funny it creates quite a funny image and to be honest the idiom really doesn't make any sense i've also talked about it before in my 25 british phrases video which is just up here if you want to see that now the bee's knees is something or someone that is fantastic or amazing it's not the same as tip top though tip top is the best of the best the bee's knees we use it a little bit more to describe people can use it for places as well but really we use it to mean amazing so if we say oh she's the bee's knees or if we say he thinks you're the bee's knees it means he thinks you're amazing he thinks you're incredible now often we use this sarcastically after all this is england we do have a tendency to be a little bit sarcastic so we can often say oh he thinks he's the bee's knees meaning actually he isn't but he thinks he is amazing very common to hear it like that do you know she thinks she's the bee's knees as a little aside as a little extra here in american english you can often hear the phrase which is equivalent to the bee's knees and this is the cat's pajamas which is also equally funny i don't know why the cat's pajamas would be the best of the best but there we go very imaginative idea with that one so the cat's pajamas you can say she thinks she's the cat's pajamas or my teacher is the cat's pajamas or my teacher is the bee's knees because you could be the ugliest sad sack on the planet but if you're in a rock and band you're the cat's pajamas man you're the bee's knees number ten again another idiom here this is to eat someone for breakfast to eat someone for breakfast now we use this where one thing will very easily destroy defeat or conquer another thing so for example if you're a professional tennis player and you're going to play an amateur tennis player you're going to eat them for breakfast you're going to defeat them destroy them very quickly at a game of tennis so if i i'm not a tennis player if i play novak djokovic he's going to eat me for breakfast yes so basically it means something that destroys another thing another example would be if you go to a job interview and it's quite a serious job or something like that if you haven't prepared the interviewer is likely to eat you for breakfast meaning ask you a lot of difficult questions and at the end you may feel like you didn't really give a good performance or you may feel a little bit like you've been eaten and then spat out again this kind of thing so to be eaten for breakfast oh you're on you're in big trouble though pal i eat pieces of like you for breakfast number 11 is chock-a-block choco block and this just means very full if we say oh the town center is chock-a-block or the traffic was chock-a-block it means it was very full there was a lot of people there or a lot of cars for example we even shortened this very often to choker the cinema was chocker when the new star wars film came out so lots of people very very crowded very full number 12 i'm going to give you two here because they have such a similar meaning one is poppycock and the other is codswallop codswallop poppycock and codswallop now both of them mean rubbish nonsense if you say oh poppycock or what codswallop you mean what nonsense what rubbish again i believe these two are very british they tend to be used perhaps in a very funny way or in an ironic way um i probably wouldn't use them that frequently unless i had the intention that i wanted to be funny because they sound quite old-fashioned in a way and quite classically british so if i wanted to make my friends laugh by saying oh what codswallop then i could by using that particular choice of word it sounds much funnier than saying rubbish or nonsense what cod swallow and it's cards while up to birds dirty blood the next one is a funny one to say it's quite amusing even to say it higgledy piggledy higgledy piggledy not very easy to say you can say it along with me higgledy piggledy and this means very similar actually to willy nilly it means chaotic without order but it's particularly used to describe the organization of things so willy-nilly can mean anything without order so for example going for a drive the way that you do your job or things it can be used for many different things but higgledy piggledy really describes a lack of organization with your material things so things in the home for example or things on your desk so you might say all of the books on her desk and her papers and things like that they were all higgledy-piggledy there was no organization so i'll let you into a secret everyone layla's desk at work used to be very higgledy-piggledy all other things were everywhere books chocolates tea bags all sorts all over the place very higgledy piggledy don't be cross with me later i let your secret out of the bag now number 14 this is particularly funny one this is hanky panky now hanky panky is quite an innocent or silly phrase really hanky panky just means um kissing and in general physical contact um perhaps even romance between people so often the older generation might say to the younger generation so for example your grandparents might tease for example teenage grandchildren they might say now no hanky-panky meaning you know if you're with a boyfriend or whatever no kissing no more than that no hanky-panky so it's a very funny phrase we often use it to joke but you could talk with me where the hanky-panky was all right number 15 is bob's your uncle bob's your uncle now this may seem a little bit bizarre but actually there is some history to this which i'll explain in a moment but this is very british and of course it sounds very funny when you say it it actually means here it is or there you have it so you can replace there it is or here you have it with bob's your uncle for example imagine you apply for a job and you you see the job online you call up you get interviewed that day and then the next day they say you've got the job you could say well i saw the job online and within two days bob's your uncle i had it now the history behind this is that there was a politician called robert in english history and he gave his nephew a job now not necessarily because his nephew deserved it or that he'd earned it just because he was his nephew this is actually called nepotism now this was why people said bob's your uncle as in he had an uncle and he got the job because his uncle worked in the government so bob's your uncle he got it like that without having to do very much so it means here it is or there you have it the next one is a very fitting verb for now it's very british again it is to trump to trump and to trump in fact means to pass wind you can even say somebody is a trumper if they are past wind rather often so it's very funny and obviously us brits have laughed about the fact that our verb to pass wind is the same name as a particular politician so very amusing for us but yes a very polite and perhaps a little bit posh way to say to pass wind but also very funny to trump number 17 is zonked and zonked just means exhausted very very tired so if you've had a long day at work you can say oh i'm completely zonked meaning i'm completely tired very british one quite similar to knacket which you might have heard us say before you might have heard layla use that in her british slang video so zonked very very tired number 19 is jiggery pokery jiggery pokery again very british and also sounds quite posh this means illegal or dishonest activities dishonest activities usually something suspicious so if you say hmm i think there's some jiggery pokery going on in that card game the host seemed to be having particularly good luck you mean something suspicious going on something dishonest some jiggery pokery very similar to shenanigans in fact the two can be used interchangeably because they are so similar so as a teacher i could say hmm i think there was some jiggery pokery going on in the class because when they handed in their essays they all seem to be very similar they can't have all had the same idea so there must be some jiggery pokery so suspicious activities things like that very british to say this it's a good fun one to say and it does sound quite amusing and old-fashioned and the last one is lovely jubbly lovely jubbly if you're from london you're very likely to say this very funny to say it and enthusiastic it just means great lovely lovely jubbly so if you find out you've had a pay rise or it's going to be a sunny day you can say oh lovely jubbly very british and even a little bit cockney so lovely fun one to say lovely jubbly wait what's your game right everybody that was the end of our video on 20 phrases and idioms that are particularly funny i do hope that they've made you laugh and if you use them that maybe you could make somebody else laugh have fun with those guys do try to use any of them in a sentence below or if you have an equivalent in your own language you can also share that in the comments below now would you like to meet a special guest she's waiting to meet you would it be lovely jobly to see her this is safira everyone this is my little girl she's four months old now are you going to be a little love english baby yes [Laughter] so bye bye guys from me and safy and we'll see you soon on love english bye bye bye

Channel: Love English with Leila & Sabrah

Views: 21,122

Keywords: Love English with Leila & Sabrah, Love English with Leila & Sabrah YouTube, YouTube Love English with Leila & Sabrah, learn English, love English, English, 20 funny british phrases, funny english phrases, british phrases, classic british phrases, advanced. english phrases, funny english idioms, english idioms, english vocabulary, british english vocabulary, british english, bob's your uncle meaning, funny english, advanced english vocabulary, bees knees meaning

Id: yhaYPXmuL_o

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020