Vanessa:
What is the number one skill you need to express yourself completely in English? It's vocabulary.
If you don't know the words, well, then you can't say them, but I have some good news. Today,
you are going to expand your vocabulary so that you can express yourself completely.
Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Today, you are going to learn vocabulary words
through pictures. I've prepared over 60 images from around the internet with 10 different
topics to help you never forget these wonderful vocabulary words. And also to help you never
forget, I have created a free PDF worksheet just for you with all of today's vocabulary words
and ideas and concepts that you are going to learn in this important lesson. You can click the
link in the description to download the free PDF worksheet today. All right, let's get started with
our first category and our first set of pictures. Our first category is professions. These people
are receptionists. They work in customer service or you can say they work in hospitality.
They might say, "I work the front desk at the Hilton Hotel." I work the front desk
at... whatever the company is. This guy is called a digital nomad. This means he can work
from anywhere. He might also be a freelancer or an independent contractor so he can work
beside the pool in his sunglasses if he wants. This person is a small business owner. She runs
a boutique. It looks like it sells clothes, maybe some other beauty products, and she's
a small business owner. Other small business owners might say, "I work for a startup." Or, "I'm
running a startup." This means it's a new company, usually a tech company. Or a small business owner
might say, "I'm an entrepreneur." Or a fun word, "I'm a solopreneur." This has to do with a
company that's generally run by just one person. This person is an artist. There are
many different types of artists. You could be a sculptor like this
person, or a designer, a painter, or a musician. I'm sure there
are many other types of artists. This person is a teacher. She teaches in
a classroom, but there are other types of teachers as well. You might say, "I'm a coach,
I'm a professor, I'm a mentor, or I'm a guide." This guy works in construction. He operates
heavy machinery. Heavy machinery might be the cement truck that's in this picture,
it could be a forklift, but it has to do with the type of work that he does. Other
types of people who work in construction are electricians, architects, and plumbers.
All right. Let's go to our next category, which is clothing. The type of clothing that
this person is wearing, we might say they are looking quite relaxed. They are wearing
athleisure. This is a mix of two words, athletics and leisure. In the U.S., it's really
common and quite popular to where athleisure. Even when you're not going to the gym, this might
just be the clothing that you wear. Other words that we can use to talk about relaxed clothing
are slouchy, sloppy, grungy, disheveled. These are all pretty negative words, but it's true that
sometimes when you're just hanging out at home, you might wear some clothes that are sloppy.
You don't look too great, but it doesn't matter. This person has a casual look. She's wearing jeans
and a sweater. We call this "everyday wear." Now, this depends on where you live, what
is considered casual wear. In the U.S., it's jeans and a t-shirt, but maybe your country
generally has more formal clothes in daily life, so it might be a nice sweater and some
jeans that fit. It looks like she's even brushed her hair, but this is a casual look.
Here, we have business casual. This is a common expression that you'll hear in the workplace. The
dress code is business casual. You can see that these people don't look overly formal. The man
is wearing jeans and a colored button up shirt, and the woman here also has pants.
She has a somewhat business-like top, but it's not too formal. Sometimes we call these
slacks. If they're black pants or something that's not too casual, slacks. We also might say
a blazer. A blazer is a casual suit jacket or we could say they are just well-dressed.
Next, we have business formal. These people definitely look more formally dressed and they
have a nice black coat on. Some terms that we use in these situations are, "They are dressed
to impress." This means that they want to look nice because they want to impress their clients,
their boss. Maybe they're trying to get a new job, whatever it is, they are dressed to
impress. We also sometimes use the term, "Dress for the job you want." This means maybe you
don't have the highest position in the company, but if you dress smartly like this,
well, maybe you'll get a promotion. So you're kind of putting yourself there in
that mental space, "I'm going to dress for the job that I want, not for the job that I have."
Some other fun expressions we use for these types of clothing are a power suit. This is especially
used for women when you have a nice suit, shirt, jacket, a nice colored shirt, and maybe
you are wearing suit pants. This could be a power suit or a pantsuit where you have pants
and a jacket that match. And here as well, almost all of these people are wearing a
button-down. We could say, "A button-down shirt," but sometimes we say, "Oh, my button-down
is wrinkly. I need to iron it." Just button-down. All right, the next people are wearing uniforms.
A lot of people wear uniforms. School children wear uniforms. People who work in the hospital
wear a uniform. It's called scrubs. People who work in the military wear a uniform, and a lot
of other professions wear uniforms as well. Finally, in our clothing category, we have
formal attire. Usually when you go to a wedding, you wear formal attire. The men are wearing suit
coats and ties or bow ties. And if everyone had a black suit, we would call this a black-tie
affair. This is as formal as it gets. Here, they're wearing gray suits. This was probably
something that the groom suggested for the men to wear, but we sometimes say a black-tie
affair. This might be like the Met Gala. A lot of celebrities are wearing black
suits. This is a black-tie affair. Another fun idiom we use to talk about formal
dress is, "They are dressed to the nines." This is the number nine, and it simply means they are
really dressed up. They are dressed formally. Sometimes people dress up just for fun and we
might say, "I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go." Okay, maybe you were just having fun and you
were dressing up at home, you could say, "I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go. Does anyone
want to go somewhere?" This is an expression you'll probably hear in movies or TV shows.
All right, let's go to our next category, which is hobbies or ways that we can describe ourself
based on our activities. Your hobby might be that you like to create. There are lots of different
things that you can create. This guy looks like he's creating some kind of media, possibly a
video. Maybe he is a content creator. That's what we call people like me who make videos for
YouTube or maybe they take pictures for Instagram. They're a content creator. But other things you
could create is you might knit, you might paint, you might write, you might do crafts.
There's a lot of things that you can create. This person likes to tinker. The expression
"to tinker" usually means that you're not a professional, you're an amateur, but you still
love to make something better. Usually this has to do with being a mechanic. Here, she's
working on a motorcycle. Restoring something, fixing something. You're not creating something
where there was nothing before. Instead, there's something that exists and you are trying to make
it better. So she is tinkering. Or maybe you are adventurous, maybe you like to go on roadtrips
or you like to jet set around the world. You like to go backpacking, try new foods, have exciting
experiences or climb giant rocks like this guy. It's possible you are an animal lover. It's
possible that she just has a dog and she loves her dog, but maybe you work with animals. You could
be an animal trainer. Maybe you have a hobby farm. This means that it's not your career to have
chickens and cows and goats, but it's just for fun. It's a hobby farm or maybe it's more serious
and you are a rancher. You have a lot of cows, a lot of space, you might be a rancher. Or you
might try to rescue animals, so you might work at an animal rescue center, or you can foster
animals. This is what my family did last month. We fostered two little Lab puppies, and this
means that we temporarily had them for three weeks until someone adopted them. We gave them a
good home for a few weeks until they could find a home forever, and it's better than them staying
at the shelter. Maybe you're an animal lover. This person is a foodie. This is a
very modern word, but you'll hear this all the time. A foodie loves to try
new foods. They like to cook and eat food, and maybe they even like to take pictures of their
food and share it, but foodies are people who love every aspect of food and are adventurous eaters.
This person, yes, she loves to read, but sometimes we call people who really love reading a nerd. It
doesn't have to be a negative term. Some people might feel it's a little negative, but for me,
I embrace it. I am a nerd. I love to read. There are different types of nerds. Some people might be
more of a nerd when it comes to science fiction. Maybe they really love comic books. There are
some people who really are obsessed with certain games like Dungeons & Dragons is a very popular
game. In this game, you create stories and you interact with other people. So someone might
say, "I am a nerd for Dungeons & Dragons." This person loves sports. So here we have some
volleyball players. They are playing volleyball, but you don't have to play a sport to be into
sports. You might just be a fan like this guy. Maybe this guy's athletic, maybe he's fit, I
don't know, but really he is into sports. So you could be a sports player or a sports fan.
All right, let's go to the next category, which is celebrities and their looks. I guess I should
say not all of these people are celebrities. I don't think she's a celebrity, but the term
we can use to talk about her is a lovely one, "the girl next door." She probably doesn't live
next door to you, but this term has to do with someone who is wholesome. Yes, they are pretty
or cute, but they are wholesome. They're not a secret spy in the night. No, they're just
a wholesome person, unassuming, charming, and you just love them because they're not
extremely special, but they're wonderful. On the other hand, a wonderful term we can use
to talk about a different type of woman is a bombshell. Here, this is a movie called Bombshell,
and it's featuring three blonde women. Now, sometimes we use the term "bombshell" to talk
about someone who is stunningly beautiful. All three of these women are stunningly beautiful, but
it's also a play on words because in this movie, these journalists bring to light a shocking
scandal. So it's kind of like these bombshell, beautiful women are also like a bomb
because they reveal something shocking in this movie. But you might hear this term
used "bombshell" to refer to a beautiful woman. Here, we have a lovely term, someone is
"curvy." So instead of saying she's not thin, a really positive term that we can use is
she's curvy. Yes, not everyone is stick thin. This is not an ideal for a lot of people. Maybe
that's your body naturally, but maybe it's not. So I think nowadays, some celebrities who are
curvy, we call this having an hourglass shape, are trying to embrace that. You can also say,
"She is full-figured." This means she's not a stick. Instead, she has an hourglass
shape. She's full-figured, she's curvy. And we could say, "Obama is charismatic."
Someone who's charismatic is charming. Usually, they're also good looking. They're a
smooth talker and they're confident. Someone who is charismatic. I think it's
a wonderful goal to try to be charismatic in English. Express yourself
well, use all of these words. Marilyn Monroe, we could say, "She is iconic."
We use this expression only for people who are extremely well-known, especially for something
specific. So we could say, "Marilyn Monroe is an iconic figure. She is best known for her hourglass
figure and her good looks." She was also a very smart business woman and a very intelligent
person, but she's best known for her looks. We talked about a lot of expressions
you can use for women, but for men, you can use the term "chiseled." I wanted to
give you the original meaning of that. First, here, you can see a statue, and it's kind of
funny because the statue is chiseling himself. He is making something out of a piece of metal
or a piece of stone, and what that means when we talk about someone is usually their face. When
we say someone is chiseled, that usually has to do with their jaw line. So we could say, "He has
a chiseled jaw." And that's generally considered something positive in Hollywood. Someone has a
chiseled jaw, and this is just a genetic feature. All right, let's go to our next section where you
will be introduced to some heroes or inspiring figures and some words we can use to describe
them. Do you know who this is? This is Marie Curie. She is a famous scientist. She was the
first woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first and only woman to win two Nobel prizes, and in
two different domains. She has completely changed science. So we could say, "She is intelligent, she
was extremely focused, and she is a trailblazer." This is a wonderful term for someone who was the
first in something. Other people who followed in her footsteps had a little bit of an easier time
because she blazed the trail first. She was the trailblazer, and then other people could follow.
This is Mother Teresa. She set up soup kitchens, she helped lepers, she helped the dying destitute.
She really had a heart for people who couldn't give back to society. It didn't matter that she
couldn't receive anything, she wanted to give to them. So we could say, "She is compassionate, she
is nurturing, she is kind. She has a kind heart." Next, we have the Dalai Llama. The Dalai Llama
is the most famous Buddhist teacher in the world, and he's widely respected for his commitment to
nonviolence and the cause of Tibetan freedom. So we could say, "He is wise, he is patient, and
he is peaceful." Probably three things that we could all do with a little bit more.
This is Nelson Mandela. He is a South African anti-apartheid activist, the most
well-known, and he was the first Black head of state in South Africa. So we could
say, "He was powerful, he was a visionary, he was courageous." Lovely expressions.
And on the other side of the world, this was Abraham Lincoln. He was a president in the U.S.
during the American Civil War. So it was a really difficult time in the U.S. For a lot of people,
and he pushed to preserve the union. This is what we call all of the United States. He wanted to
preserve the United States and abolish slavery. Some terms often associated with him are empathy.
He cared about those who were enslaved, integrity, and honesty. Sometimes we even use the expression,
"Honest Abe." He is such an Honest Abe. "Oh, my son's such an Honest Abe. He can't lie. Anytime
he lies, it's so obvious. He's an Honest Abe." Finally, we have a mythical, or we should say
fictional person, but they were also real. This is Rosie the Riveter. And during World War II,
you would have seen these posters all over the U.S. and it was because a lot of men, almost all
of the young men were fighting in the war. So who could do the men's jobs back in the U.S.? Well,
it was the women. So this was supposed to mobilize women to go to factories, to work towards creating
and preserving what was left of the country while the men were gone, and it was supposed to empower
women. In fact, my great-grandmother was one of these women. She left her family and she went
to go work in the factories while all of the men were gone during World War II. So we could
say that Rosie the Riveter embodies the idea of someone who is strong, someone who's bold,
someone who is resilient. I love that word. All right, let's go to our next category, which
is about money. Oh my, does this picture hurt your heart? Burning money. Well, there are two idioms
that I'd like you to remember about this picture, and it is, "To have money to burn." You could say,
"He got his first paycheck and now he has money to burn." This means he really wants to spend all his
money, or you have money burning a hole in your pocket. You just got paid and you're just feeling
like, "Oh, I need to spend that money. I need to do something with it." You're not going to save
it. You're not going to give it away. Instead, you just can't stop thinking about it. That
money is burning a hole in your pocket. With this picture, I want you to learn
the expression, "All he sees are dollar signs." This is someone who cannot stop
thinking about money. All he sees are dollar signs. "How much was that? Oh, could
I buy that? Hmm, I wonder how much that was? If I saved... " All they can think about is money.
In this picture, you could say, this person has a lot of money. They are a hotshot. They're
a high roller. They're a big spender. Most normal people don't go around carrying this
much money, but a hot shot might do that. On the other hand, if you have nothing in your
pockets, this type of image exactly means you are broke. This doesn't mean that you broke a
bone. It means you have no money in your wallet. You have empty pockets. Sometimes if someone
wants to say that they don't have any money, all that they might do is this. They might
touch their pockets, maybe pretend to pull them out. Say, "Sorry, I don't have any money."
It's kind of a classic symbol of I have no money. Somebody who is a penny pincher. Do you
think that's a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it all depends on how you say it.
If you say someone is a penny pincher, usually it's not so positive. It means that
they're always trying to look for a shortcut, ways to save money, but sometimes that means that
they are not very generous and they're just trying to save money. Somebody like this can also be
called cheap. You don't want to be called cheap. It's not positive. Or even worse than that is a
tightwad. "Oh, he's such a tightwad. Last year, he gave me a pencil for Christmas." But if you are
careful with your money, you're not a tightwad, you're not cheap, you're not a penny pincher,
but you don't spend money all over the place, you can use a positive term. You are frugal. This
is the term that I like to think about for myself. I try to be generous to other people, but I also
try to be frugal. I'm careful with my money. All right, let's go to the next category,
which is the space around us. Oh my, this room is cluttered. It's messy. It's a pigsty.
This refers to the place where pigs live. Pigs are not known for being neat and tidy, so I'm sorry
if someone came into your house and said, "Oh my, it's a pigsty in here." It's not a compliment.
On the other hand, this person is neat, tidy, organized, and a lovely advanced word is
meticulous. You can be meticulous about your space. It's very organized. It's not
that this person has nothing in their house, they have things here, but it's all organized.
But you can also be meticulous in your work. This is a great word to use for a job
interview when you're describing your work ethic. If you are detail-oriented, you
never forget little details, you could say, "I am meticulous. You will never have to ask me
twice, and I will always try to do it exactly right the first time." You are meticulous.
Now, this picture, yes, there's a lot of things, but the feel of this place is homey. Now,
when a place is homey, it means it's cozy, it's intimate. It feels like somebody lives here.
It's well-decorated, but it just feels like home. On the other hand, this place is
sparse, minimalistic, cold, and sterile. Sometimes this type of decor, it's not really
even decor, but this type of architecture is popular online because I think people see
pictures of this and they think, "Oh, it's so simple. You don't have to clean anything." But
would you want to live in a place like this? No, I'd much rather live in a place like this.
The final expression and picture we're going to use to talk about space is open, spacious.
It is even sprawling. Sprawling has to do with a big space, and we might even say
that this room, here's the kitchen, you can see the living room in the distance,
it flows. So the house flows from one room to the next. You don't have to open a door, close
a door, go down a hallway. It just easily flows from one room to the next. It's very airy.
All right, let's go to the next category, which is holidays. Holidays are usually family
oriented. You might spend time with your family because you have deep family values. And if
you enjoy spending time with your family, you might say, "We are close-knit, so I can't
wait to spend time together during the holidays." This picture has to do with spending time with
friends. You can say, "We're going to chill. We're going to hang out. We're going to get together."
Sometimes instead of saying Thanksgiving in the U.S., we use the term Friendsgiving. This
is especially true if you can't go home to your family during the Thanksgiving holiday,
you might hear people use this expression, Friendsgiving. Sometimes we even say that close
friends are the family you choose. So you can't choose who your family is, but you might say
if you have some really close, special friends, "They are the family I chose." So they're just
like your family, but you could choose them. Here, we have someone who is not going
away on vacation. Instead, what is this guy doing? He is having a staycation. This is
a mix between two words to stay and vacation, but it means he's not going to leave the house,
he's not working. and he's not going to school. He's just chilling on the couch with a book,
some coffee. He's having a staycation. So you could say, "He's chilling at home, he's
taking it easy, or he's just doing nothing." Here, we have a lovely Christmas picture, lovely
winter picture. Some expressions we use when we think about pictures like this is, "I'll be home
for the holidays." It has this warm feeling inside that you've been far away from home, far away
from your family, but during the holiday season, and maybe in your country, Christmas is not the
big holiday, it might be another big holiday, but you might say, "I can't wait to be home for
the holidays." Sometimes we sing I'll Be Home for Christmas. It's a popular Christmas song, and this
picture is exactly a winter wonderland. Where I live, it doesn't look like this. Maybe two days
out of each winter, there is a snow like this, but it would certainly be nice to visit.
Let's talk about some traditions that happen on holidays. In the U.S., a popular holiday is
Halloween, and we carve pumpkins. We also write letters to Santa. At Christmas, children love to
write letters to Santa and tell him what they hope to get for Christmas. And usually the night before
Christmas, so on Christmas Eve, children make cookies and set a glass of milk beside the chimney
because that's where Santa comes down, and in the morning, the cookies and the milk are mysteriously
gone because Santa has come to eat them. A very popular tradition for almost every holiday
is that you cook special dishes and you eat them together. This looks like Thanksgiving because I
see a wonderful Turkey in the middle of the table, but I imagine whatever holidays are popular
in your country, you cook special dishes. All right, let's go to the next category, which
is shopping. This lady is window shopping. When she leaves home, she might tell her husband,
"Hey, I'm just going to look. I'm just going window shopping. I'm just going to look."
Now, this guy, he looks like he's looking for something specific, so he could say, "I'm
looking for a specific vitamin. Excuse me, I'm looking for this vitamin. Could you help me
find it?" Or we can often use a fun verb, "To peruse the shelves." This means maybe something's
tricky to find, so he has to look on each shelf, he is perusing the shelves. And maybe really
he's not looking for a specific vitamin or something specific, he could just say, "Ah, I'm
just looking. Thanks." Maybe he's just browsing, just checking out the options. He could use
that expression. "I'm just looking. Thanks." Now, this person is in the dressing room.
Sometimes these are called fitting rooms. So you might ask someone at a clothing store,
"Excuse me, can I have a fitting room please?" Or, "Can I have a dressing room? Where are your
dressing rooms? Where are your fitting rooms?" She is trying something on. That's what you do
in the store. It's quite common in the U.S. to be able to try something on before you buy it.
Here, we have a little kid shopper, and there's a couple different terms that we can use to
talk about that yellow thing. It could be a grocery cart. That's what I call it, a cart,
but you could also call it a shopping cart, a buggy, or if you're carrying, it's just a
basket. I need to get a basket because I don't have to get many items, but it looks like this
little kid is pushing around a shopping cart. This man is carrying a pile of some large items.
We use the term "stocking up" or "stockpiling" because he is getting a lot or a big quantity
of things. This happened a lot during COVID, and it also happens whenever there's a
big storm. People will go to the store and they will stockpile toilet paper, bread, those
essential items. They will stockpile those items. Sometimes a negative word we use to talk about
that is "to stash" those items. So during COVID, some people bought so many rolls of toilet
paper, they had a stash of toilet paper, and it meant that other people didn't have enough,
and this caused a crisis in some places. So maybe don't stockpile too many things, just enough.
All right, let's go to our final category, which are movies and books. This picture represents
action movies. In action movies, there are often high-speed chases, explosions, fight scenes.
Some popular action movies are Indiana Jones, Rocky movies, Mission Impossible movies, James
Bond movies. Also, you might watch a thriller. This is a clip or a scene from the movie Memento,
and I don't really enjoy many stressful movies, but I really enjoyed the movie Memento. I highly
recommend it. These types of thriller movies are suspenseful, they're nail-biters. You're biting
your nails because you want to know what's going to happen. Maybe they're hair-raising, "Oh, that
movie was so hair-raising. Every moment I thought something crazy was going to happen. It's very
suspenseful." And there's often a cliff-hanger at key moments. A cliff-hanger means that
you think something's going to happen, and then boom, they cut to another scene. So
you are left waiting what's going to happen. Another type of this more, not stressful, but
suspenseful movie is a fun term called whodunit. Now, this means who did it. But we often combine
this into one rather casual expression, whodunit. So we could say, "Murder on the Orient Express is
a whodunit." So you want to find out who did the murder, who did the bad thing. It's a whodunit.
We can also call these murder mysteries. They're page-turners. They have plot twists. I couldn't
put it down because I just kept reading it. I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend reading
this book, Murder on the Orient Express. This is the movie version. I think the book version by
Agatha Christie is even better. But some common whodunit authors or classic authors, for example,
are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote the Sherlock Holmes series, and Agatha Christie who wrote
this. They are the classic whodunit authors. Finally, we have, talking about the word classic,
classic movies. These are movies that are culturally significant. To use a term we talked
about before, they are iconic, they are timeless, they are a must-see. So this is from Forrest Gump.
It is a timeless movie. It is an iconic movie, and we could say it's a classic. Other classic
movies are the Star Wars series, The Shawshank Redemption movie, iconic Gump, The Godfather
series. These are classic movies that you have to see in order to understand more about a culture
and just to be a well-rounded movie watcher. Here, we have our final expression, which is
a "RomCom." This stands for romantic comedy, and these have lots of love and lots of laughs.
Usually, the theme of these movies is that true love will win in the end. And if you are
having a sad day, having a hard time, sometimes watching a RomCom can pick up your spirits.
So how did you do? Did you enjoy this lesson learning important daily life vocabulary
through pictures? I hope so. Don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet with all
of this lesson's vocabulary, ideas, concepts, everything that you need to express yourself
completely. You can click on the link in the description to download that free worksheet today.
Well, thank you so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a
new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching
this video next. You will learn 250 more important vocabulary words with pictures, including which
famous movie and book character is a goody two shoes. Do you know this expression? Well, watch
the video to find out, and I'll see you there.
