Idioms and phrases about a hand. Learn English online free video lessons

[Music] hey everybody chris americos here and in this video i'm going to give you a hand or maybe even two today's video is all about idioms and phrases that use the word hand so of course you know the first meaning of this word which is a part of the body but it can also be a verb to hand something to someone and i could say hand me that book it means give me that book right so to hand something means to give using your hand but there are a lot of interesting phrases that use the word hand to mean something different for example what does it mean if you experience something first hand or if we say that you have first hand experience what does that mean well it means that you did something yourself with your own hands you had this experience yourself it's not a story that you heard from someone else it's about you and the thing that you did yourself the next phrase is my hands are tied and if someone ties your hands then you can't move your hands right you're stuck and you've been immobilized so if someone says that their hands are tied it means that they can't do anything they can't help they can't do anything because they're stuck right so for example i have to work at 5 p.m oh but chris i need your help at 5 00 p.m exactly 5 p.m my hands are tied i have to work i can't do anything i can't change this right i'm stuck we also have the phrase at hand which doesn't really make sense at all but it's an adjective and it means something that's happening now or something that we're talking about now so i could say we need to solve the problem at hand before we try to solve another problem this means we need to solve the problem that we're looking at now we need to solve the first problem the problem that we are on right now before we move to the next one we could also say that somebody has a hand in something it's a long phrase and what this means is that the person was connected the person influenced this or maybe the person caused this situation to happen so they have some kind of role in this situation we might say mike's aunt the vice president of the company had a hand in mike getting the job so this means that she was connected and she helped this happen another phrase that we can use is to try your hand at something and believe it or not at one point in my life i thought you know what maybe i should try something different other than teaching english can you believe that i can't believe it but i tried something different one time i tried my hand at real estate and i worked in real estate buying and selling houses and i tried my hand at it but it wasn't for me so that's why i'm back to being an english teacher where i should be another phrase that we can use is to wash your hands of something this means that you want to get rid of it and you want to not be connected to it anymore so we might say something like the boss washed his hands of the situation and told us to figure it out ourselves this means he didn't want to be connected to this anymore and he was finished with that situation alright the next phrase is very popular in fact maybe you've heard it before because a lot of english speakers use this phrase and it's a special idiom a special type of phrase that only has a special meaning when these words are together and this phrase is to know something like the back of your hand to know something like the back of your hand i guess this means that you know what the back of your hand looks like very well you know it very very well so if you know something like the back of your hand it means that you know it well for example we could say i know this city like the back of my hand it means i know everything about this city but probably the most popular phrase is to give someone a hand and to give someone a hand means to help someone to give them some assistance to give them help and we might say mike gave me a hand when i moved to a new house right he helped me and if you see that your friend needs help you might say can i give you a hand this means can i help somehow or do you need a hand with that do you need help with that another phrase that we might use is to get out of hand and if something gets out of hand it means that we don't have control we lose control so we might say the party started very fun but it quickly got out of hand it became crazy it became uncontrolled okay the next one is to be handy with something and to be handy with something it means to be very good at using something or to know something well because when we say that something is handy or when we say a person is handy it means that they're very useful so if you say this machine is very handy it means that this machine helps you do something and makes it easier for you and a person who's handy is very useful and helpful in the same way we might say john's dad is very handy with cars it means he knows a lot about them and he can be helpful and useful with cars one of my favorite phrases with the word hand is when we say to be in good hands we might say we found a cat and we didn't find the cat's owner but we've decided to help this cat and now the cat is in good hands right the cat is with good people this is what it means when we say to be in good hands which is funny because the next phrase is to be a handful and this means something negative this means that it's very difficult to be with the person or to do some activity if we say john is a handful it means that he needs a lot of attention and it's very difficult for you to interact with him and to give him what he needs we use this a lot when we talk about small children who need a lot of attention from parents we can say that susie sure is a handful all right the next phrase is hands down now this is the opposite of what the police might tell you if you are a criminal they'll say hands up right and then hands down means that you put your hands down right well it has a special meaning too because we could say this is the best youtube lesson i've ever seen hands down it means like there's no question about it there's no doubt this is clearly the answer this is clearly the best and i'm sure you'll agree right this is the best youtube video hands down okay the next one is a handout and a handout is something that you give to other people with your hands now usually you give it to many many people we use this in two situations that i can think of for example in school the teacher might give you some papers that help you understand something more so they talked about some kind of subject you sat through the lecture and then they gave you a piece of paper that shows you some more details about this right this is a handout from the teacher the teacher hands it to every student the teacher gives it to every student but we can also use the word handout about people who are out on the street giving you a piece of paper right it's a kind of advertising and marketing people stand on the street and hand you a piece of paper and these things are called handouts in general anything that a person gives to everybody for free we can call a handout and a handout can also have another meaning it can mean something that we got for free and we didn't need to work for it and it can be negative in this way we might say johnny has never had a job he only lives off of handouts and that brings us to our last example today which is a hand-me-down johnny who doesn't have a job and takes handouts he probably has some hand-me-downs too hand-me-downs are usually about clothes but they could be about other things and a hand-me-down is something that you get from another person it's second hand maybe you know that phrase too something that has already been used by another person now we usually say hand me down when we're talking about somebody in our family or someone from an older generation or someone who's older than us who used it and then passed it on to us so it was very easy for us to get it and use it and we didn't have to buy something else but at the same time we understand that this means it's old and it's probably not the best quality so as you can see from this video there are a lot of different meanings of the word hand in different phrases i hope you found this video helpful and useful and some of these phrases will come in handy for you sometime soon if you like this video make sure you press like press subscribe leave a comment down below and also go over to my website chrisamericost.com and join my english everyday speaking program where we have 25 live lessons every day with native speakers and professional teachers from around the world and thousands of students from different countries around the world who you can practice speaking english with all day every day it's really the best program in the world so i hope to see you at the next lesson have a great day bye

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

Views: 9,872

Keywords: English study, English study online, How to study English, English study guide, Kris Amerikos, English lesson, English for free, English idioms, English phrases, English course, English course online, English speaking course

Id: v3aa7cbJHAk

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021