15 Phrases to Help Level Up Your English

Hey, don't you step out of line. You wouldn't want to have to foot the bill for this. Sometimes it's good to get out of your bubble. Do you know what these English phrases mean? Or would you get a little bit nervous if you heard these in English conversation? Well these idioms plus more phrases I'm going to teach you today are phrases that English speakers like myself actually use in our natural everyday conversations. And I want to teach them to you so that you can feel confident using some new phrases to have more colorful advanced language and for your own comprehension as well. Let's level up your English with some new phrases today. And if you want to study further, make sure to use the link below or visit englishwithkayla.com to join my English vocabulary help community where you get access to some learning resources every single week to help you understand these lessons and study further with a community and access to ask myself some questions. We've also started some new challenges. So there's some speaking challenges. There's some writing challenges that can really help you learn more and study these lessons in English. I can't wait to see you in the community. Now let's get started with this lesson to step out of line. So if somebody steps out of line, we usually use this phrase to mean that they're breaking the rules or they're not following the expected behavior. Please step out of line. Oftentimes parents, teachers, or any other authority type boss person will use this phrase, especially if they're giving someone a warning like if you step out of line, I'm going to call the principal and get you kicked out of class. That's something a teacher might say here in the United States. It just means if you don't start following the expectations or stop, you know, acting so unruly or rebellious, then you are going to be in trouble. Sometimes adults will say, well, I'll make sure not to step out of line. This is kind of a joking way to say, like, I'm going to try to follow the rules and not bend or break the rules. It's kind of a joke, especially in situations where the rules aren't so strict. This next English phrase is really important because it applies to so many English learners that I have taught before. So to be in a bubble, we use this phrase and it has nothing to do with soap or water. It just means that you're very isolated. You only stick to your community or you're not experiencing a lot of different cultures or traveling a lot. A lot of people in the United States, if they live in small towns, they tend to stay in their own bubble. This just means they don't go outside of their community very often. They don't travel and they don't even talk to a lot of people that don't look exactly like them. Do you live in a bubble or something? So it's often seen as very negative to be like inside your own bubble. But sometimes, you know, it's not seen as so negative as just the reality. A lot of immigrants that come to United States, they tend to stay in their own bubble. Perhaps they live in a neighborhood with other people from their same country or from their same culture because they feel comfortable speaking the language and knowing exactly what to do, which sometimes my students, if they don't get out of their bubble, they have a hard time practicing their English or learning new English phrases. And it can be uncomfortable at first to get outside of your bubble, but it's very, very important to do so. So now, you know, if somebody says that they need to get out of their bubble or somebody is in a bubble, it has nothing to do with soap and water and just everything to do with their comfort zone or their community. A side effect. So a side effect, the literal definition is unintended consequences or reactions. And oftentimes, this is used in a really medical sense. So when we talk about taking a medication known as ibuprofen or Advil here in the United States, it's the standard anti-inflammatory pain reliever. The side effect, the negative side effect can be that it can cause stomach ulcers, like huge pains in your stomach. So that would be a negative reaction or side effect. Sometimes we can use the word side effect in a cultural sense as well to mean, you know, an unintended consequence. So maybe someone really wants to be famous or they want to go viral on the Internet. And you can say one side effect of going viral or becoming famous is that you lose your privacy. People want to know everything about you and they'll do all sorts of detective work to figure out, you know, who's in your family, who is your friend, how much money you make, where you live. And it can feel bad not to have the privacy that you would normally have if you're famous or if you go viral online. Have there been any side effects? If YouTube ads annoy you, maybe they are the bane of your existence. And if they are, make sure to join my community, the English Vocabulary Help Vault, because you will get access to all my lessons and past lessons with no advertisements. And you can get them in podcast form if you want to as well. So join the membership and you will not have to listen to any more YouTube ads. But let's talk about this phrase, the bane of my existence. The way I'm saying this is very dramatic because this is definitely a phrase that we use in kind of a dramatic or humorous way in English to say that something really annoys us or we really dislike doing it. For me, the bane of my existence is laundry and dishes. I would rather be doing just about anything else, especially chores wise, than these two things. I would love to go work in my garden or mow my lawn or vacuum. But I hate folding laundry and I hate doing dishes. So I call them the bane of my existence. Can you think of something that really annoys you that you could call the bane of your existence? Let me know. It's a really fun, dramatic phrase to use when you want to talk about something so annoying. She's the bane of my existence. To have a vice. So a vice is something that we call a bad habit or a weakness. We can use vice to talk about something very serious. For instance, shopping or gambling or some sort of addiction. But we also sometimes say like, oh, my vice is chocolate. I just love chocolate so much. It's something that you'll always be weak for. If you see chocolate, you just have to have it because it's your vice. Or in a more joking way, rather than an actual money spending or shopping addiction, you can say, oh, shoes are my vice. I just love buying and shopping for shoes so much. So we use it in a more joking, a lighter way sometimes, but it can be a very serious phrase as well. If you call something a vice, it just means you have a bad habit or an addiction. We have other vices. Now I have some interesting phrases that you need to learn when it comes to talking about responsibility and cause and effect. The first phrase is so important. I always see it in books and on movies and television or even in the news. So the phrase is to be a scapegoat. So if you call something a scapegoat, it means it's being blamed unfairly for a really big problem. In sports, we always say, you know, if somebody gets blamed for the team's entire loss, they're the scapegoat. So we're blaming them. You know, somebody gets the blame for the loss. In soccer or in football, it's always the goalie. You know, they should have saved the ball. If only they would have saved that shot and the other team wouldn't have scored, then we would have won. In this case, the goalie is the scapegoat. They're being blamed very unfairly for the team's entire loss because obviously it is a team effort to win a game. You know, the offense should have been scoring, the defense should have stopped the ball before it got to the goalie. They are the scapegoat. In dysfunctional families, one kid in the family oftentimes becomes the scapegoat for the entire family's problems. And maybe the kid wants to be the scapegoat. You know, they don't want everyone else to be mad at each other. So they say, oh, it's my fault. Like, don't blame him. I'll take the blame. Like, it's it's my fault. They're being blamed unfairly because they're not actually causing every single problem. We need a scapegoat. These next two phrases are pretty similar, but they're used very versatily and they're really common. So the first one is a breeding ground, to be a breeding ground for something. The first thing that comes to my mind when it comes to being a breeding ground for germs and sickness is a indoor playground for children. So I have three young children and in the winter we get, you know, cooped up in the house and we need to go out and burn some energy, but it's too cold to go play. So sometimes we pay to go play inside of an indoor playground. And I almost don't want to ever go anymore because every single time we go, we get some sort of stomach sickness, we get a cold, we get the flu. It's terrible. It's a breeding ground for germs just because there are so many children there and it's really hard to keep the playground clean from sicknesses and germs. So this is a quite literal example of this phrase. The indoor playground is a breeding ground for germs because so many sicknesses and viruses live and grow there. But you can use this phrase in a less literal way as well to just say like there is a place or a situation where very negative things can happen very easily. So for instance, a lot of people say the internet is a breeding ground for bullying. People get bullied so frequently on social media and it's so easy to, you know, make a negative comment when you're not actually face to face with a person, you're just behind your phone or behind your keyboard. So it is a breeding ground for bullying and just negative speaking. The internet is a breeding ground for freaks. The next phrase is really similar. When we want to call something a hot spot, it's a place known for something. Or we can say, you know, the indoor playground is a hot spot for germs. Everyone knows that if you go to the indoor playground, you're probably going to get sick. Or if you want to talk about a place that's dangerous, you could say it is a hot spot for crime. Or you can use it in a more positive way as well. I'll give you an example. So many years ago, I was in Los Angeles on a vacation and a hot spot for celebrities to go because they want to get paparazzi'd, you know, they want people to take their picture, is Sunset Boulevard. And I was eating breakfast at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard one morning and I did get to see one celebrity. I did have one celebrity sighting in this celebrity hot spot. It was the actor, the kid from Stranger Things, and I don't know his name, but he is definitely very recognizable. And he had paparazzi taking his pictures as well. We're going to hit the hot spots. There is one other way that we use hot spot as well. When we want to say that there is a location that has Wi-Fi, maybe an airport, or if you have a device that can provide Wi-Fi, we call it a Wi-Fi hot spot. So an interesting phrase that we have to mean that somebody has to pay for something, even though they did not buy it, really, or they didn't cause, you know, the cost, is we say they have to foot the bill. So the first example here that comes to my mind is when very privileged young adults, children, go to a university or college and their parents pay the entire cost. They foot the bill and the kid, you know, doesn't go to class and they party all the time. Their parents might say, why am I footing the bill for this? You're not even taking it seriously. So we use this phrase to foot the bill. It means to pay the cost for something for someone else that, like, we didn't even want to pay that bad or we're not getting benefit from paying. You might be at a restaurant and, you know, someone might say, who's footing the bill for this? Meaning, like, I don't want to pay for this. Who is actually paying for this? It's seen as a negative thing if someone has to foot the bill. And they'll foot you with the bill. Another situation I can see this phrase being used, you know, more in a casual way, you wouldn't want to offend somebody with this phrase, is if you're at a wedding and it seems really expensive, you might whisper to a friend, you know, who's footing the bill for this? This is so fancy or nice or expensive. So it just means, you know, who has to pay for this wedding? Because you might assume that the bride and groom are not paying for their own wedding in this situation. A really cool phrase we have in English that describes a small action as having a really big consequence is a ripple effect. So something can have a ripple effect. You can say something has a ripple effect on your own life. To give an example, maybe somebody posts a video on TikTok of themselves singing their favorite song. And this video gains tons of attention because, you know, everyone says, oh, you're so good at singing. And then you get a record deal, which means you get paid to make a record and sing famous on TV. You know, just a small video that you posted that you didn't think would have big consequences has a huge ripple effect on your life. This is a really fun imaginary situation. A more serious situation that happens all the time is I think acts of kindness, a small act of kindness can have a really big ripple effect on your community or just on somebody's life in general. I think of paying for somebody's coffee when you're in the drive-thru line and they say, oh, wow, that was so nice. Now I need to make a kind act as well. Maybe they pay for another person's coffee or maybe they buy a coffee for a homeless person. So your one small act can have a ripple effect on other people. We have one other phrase that's kind of similar to this one. It's called a butterfly effect, and it basically just means that something really small in your life that doesn't seem like it would be a big decision will actually cause a lot of different things to happen in your life. So it's the idea that when a butterfly flaps its wings, a small action can change a lot of things in a big way. And the ripple effect, to go back to the origin of this phrase, you might already know, if you drop a small pebble into water, a small rock into water, the ripples will become very big in the water and will have a great effect on the water. One phrase that somebody used recently that I had to write down in order to teach you is to get or to give a green light. It might be easy to guess what this phrase means, but I'm going to show you exactly how to use it. So if you get a green light, it means you get permission or the okay to do something. Or if you give the green light, it means you give permission. I had a babysitter at my house and she said, if you give me the green light, I'll take the kids down to the park. This means just if you give me the okay or if you give me permission, I will do this. A lot of times people are making movies or television shows. We say that a studio gave them the green light to make the show. This means they approved it. Just give us the green light. If you are a fast eater, you might have heard this phrase before. The phrase is to scarf something down. Be careful how you use this phrase because you might want to offend someone by saying, wow, you're really scarfing down that pizza. But if you notice that someone was really hungry and they're eating really fast, you could definitely use this phrase or you could say, oh, I'm so hungry. I could scarf down all this food. It's just a slang or fun phrase used to mean to eat really fast. And it's used typically when someone was really hungry. I have been reading this book recently. I'm pretty far into it. It's called The Woman. It's about female nurses in the Vietnamese-American War. It's a great historical fiction book if you're looking for a recommendation. But this book gave me a range of emotions. This phrase, a range of emotions, it means it gives you many different feelings almost at the same time or one after another. So this book, at first it was surprising, then it was, you know, sad and then it was exciting. And then there was some comedy in it. So this book, it just had a range of emotions. I went through a wide range of emotions. Sometimes people say, you know, death causes a range of emotions because you feel so many different feelings when it comes to grief. And some people say, you know, parenting is a range of emotions because you can be so tired, you can be so happy, you can feel so loved, you can feel so sad to see your kids sad. So there's a range of emotions here. We use this phrase a lot when we're describing just this feeling of having so many different emotions almost at the same time or in the same time frame. I find that it's a little bit difficult sometimes for English learners to express irony or an ironic situation. So let me give you a phrase to help you out here. If you want to say, you know, something's ironic, you can use the phrase, here's the kicker. Here's the kicker. So you're going to use this phrase when you're introducing something that's kind of surprising or unexpected. So let me give you two kind of similar examples here. You could say he was afraid of getting beat up. Here's the kicker. He's a professional fighter. So it's ironic that a professional fighter would be afraid of getting beat up, you know, at a bar or just wherever on the street. Another example is she forgot what she was going to say. And here's the kicker. She's a professional speaker. So obviously, if you're a professional speaker, it would be ironic or unexpected that you would forget what to say. So this phrase is really useful when it comes to introducing some sort of twist or something just like crazy, unexpected that happened. If you are starting out in your career, you may want to make a name for yourself. This phrase, it just means that you want to show people what you can do. You want to be well respected and well known for something. Everybody is just trying to make a name for themselves. So it's not seen as a negative thing to try to do this. It just means you're hardworking and trying to be honest and you're trying to be well known for what you do the best. A lot of times, singers, actors or athletes will try to make a name for themselves. But people in their everyday jobs can use this phrase as well to just mean you want to be well known for doing good work or being the best at what you do. You're making a real name for yourself. Let me know what phrases were new to you in this lesson. I can't wait to see. And to go beyond just watching this video, make sure you visit englishwithkayla.com where you can download the learning resources that go along with this video and participate in weekly challenges and quizzes with me and my community. I'll see you guys in the next lesson. Thank you so much for watching with me today. Goodbye.