🔖 English Idioms Topic

The weather in the UK is suddenly getting cold, with our first proper frosts. Apparently we are getting weather from Sweden and Norway and we might even have a white Christmas, which has not happened in a long time. I guess, this is why I’m hearing so many English idioms related to cold at the moment. It was the Prime Minister who was On Thin Ice in the Brexit negotiations with the EU. Or the NHS being Snowed Under with extra work because of the Pandemic.

Published

December 17, 2020

I think it’s true that positive rewards are a better motivation for most people, rather than negative ones. However, if you need someone to do something, and suitable rewards cannot encourage them to act, you sometimes need to highlight negative or even threatening outcomes. Especially if people will not do what you need them to do. Now that took quite a lot of English vocabulary to explain a simple scenario, a native English speaker would prefer to use an English idiom, a metaphor which explains the scenario in a much simpler idiomatic way.

Published

October 08, 2020

A recent comment on YouTube, which suggested that idioms make English interesting, got me thinking about English idioms. It has been a while since I last did an English idiom lesson, so today we are going to talk about a horse idiom I heard being used on BBC Radio 4.

Published

September 21, 2020

I was talking to a British colleague of mine about Adept English recently and mentioned that one of our English lessons will be on English idioms. They said nobody uses idioms that much anymore, and I laughed because the music on the radio at that very moment was Stormzy, a popular English rapper, was literally rapping a song about an English idiom at that very moment. The English use idioms all the time!

Published

July 23, 2020

Today we examine 3 common English idioms. English idioms are a pain to learn for new English language learners. We try to make it fun and interesting, so much so you might like these awkward parts of the English language when we finish with them.

Published

June 18, 2020

Well, it’s been nearly a month since we last discussed an English idiom, so in today's English lesson we will jump right in and learn some phrases you would almost definitely hear in everyday English conversations at work or home.

Published

May 18, 2020