25 Idioms Every American English Speaker Should Know.

Did you know there's a better way to learn English than just studying a dictionary? In today's English lesson, I'm going to teach you 25 idioms that every American knows so that you can upgrade your English conversations. Let's get started. I'll teach you the idioms that we actually use in our conversations, and I'll show you some examples of how you can actually use them when you speak as well. To go hand in hand. Now, when people walk together, we say they're walking hand in hand if they are holding hands. In our everyday English conversations, we want to say that two things go together very nicely. We say they go hand in hand. For instance, practicing English every day and speaking like a native English speaker go hand in hand because the more you practice, the better that you will sound. This next phrase, it can be applied in a lot of different ways. If you take a verb, you add ed as the suffix, and then you say out, like we could say I'm hiked out. If you've been hiking all day, you can say I'm hiked out. That means you don't want to hike anymore because you've done that action so much. Or if you've studied and studied and studied and you don't want to study anymore, you could say I'm studied out. So this just means that you've done something so much that you are completely exhausted and you don't want to do that action anymore. Sometimes we don't just use this with verbs. If you've had too much of a food, let's say you've had a ton of candy, you've been eating candy all day, and someone says, hey, do you want some of these M&Ms? Or do you want some of these Skittles? You can say, no, I am candied out for the day. That means you can't eat any more candy. So if you are confused at why an English speaker is saying, you know, a noun with the ed suffix, or you hear someone say I'm hiked out or I'm walked out or I'm runned out, and you're like, that doesn't sound right. It's because we're speaking in this way and it's like an idiom the way we use it. It just means you're exhausted. You don't want to do the action or have that thing anymore. Normally when we use the verb find or to find, we're talking about looking for someone that is lost or looking for something that is lost. Now, sometimes the way that we speak in English, we use this verb to find in a totally different way. So if you think that someone is funny, you can say, I find them funny. This means, you know, you think that they're funny. They are funny to you. Or you could say, you know, I've never really found them funny. This means they don't seem funny to you. So we use to find with an adjective to describe the way that we perceive someone or something. If you are someone who has never really enjoyed Taylor Swift's music, you could say, I don't really find her talented. This means she's not talented to you in your opinion. Or a lot of times if we're in a situation, we say, oh, I really am finding this to be enjoyable. Or you can say, I don't find this to be enjoyable. This means you don't like it. So we can say, you know, we're finding someone a certain quality or adjective. Or we can say, we find this thing a certain adjective like funny, or we find this ugly, we find this pretty, we find this to be boring, things like that. So this verb to find in this phrase is super, super useful in English. When I was in college, when I was a college student, I would always say, I cannot wait for the day that I graduate. I cannot wait. Well, as quick as you possibly can. Quicker, please. So this phrase to wait for the day or you cannot wait for the day, it just means you're extremely, extremely excited for something to happen. And you're anticipating it. Sometimes when someone is judging you and they're judging you in a negative way, you might say, I cannot wait for the day when this thing that you're judging me for happens to you. For instance, you know, maybe you have a baby and they're crying and someone's looking at you like, oh, why is your baby crying in public? In the United States, a lot of people have a huge problem with babies crying in public, even though, you know, they're just babies. But you might say, I cannot wait for the day when you have kids and they are crying in public. This just means, you know, I can't wait for this to happen to you because, you know, you won't be judging the situation as harshly. So we say this, you know, when we're, you know, wanting something to happen to someone so that they don't judge the situation. And we also say, I can't wait for the day when we're excited about something. Maybe you'll say, I cannot wait for the day that we go on vacation. It just means you're very excited and you're anticipating your vacation. Have you ever heard of an Easter egg? And if you do happen to find that Easter egg, there's a bonus. Of course, in the United States, Easter is a holiday that some people celebrate religiously. And there's also a non-religious aspect to Easter where we tell children the story of an Easter buddy coming and bringing eggs with little prizes and candies inside and getting an Easter basket with some gifts inside as well. It's kind of a strange tradition, but sometimes we use that term Easter egg to mean that there are things inside of a movie or a video game that reference something else outside of the movie, the television show, or the video game. When I think of Easter eggs in this context, I think of the Disney and Pixar movies because a lot of times those movies will have little items in the background of the movie that reference the other movies. For instance, in Finding Nemo, there are a ton of Easter eggs that reference other Pixar movies. If you've seen The Incredibles, there is a newspaper with Mr. Incredible on the front that a kid is reading inside the dentist's office in Finding Nemo. If you haven't seen these movies, I recommend it because even though they're children's movies, they are so entertaining. If you've watched them before, you could watch them again and learn some English while reading the captions or the subtitles. An Easter egg is just something that the dialogue of a movie or television show, they're not talking about it, but it's just something in the background that references something else. It's a really interesting vocabulary term. Sometimes in English, we say things twice in slang to kind of emphasize something. This next idiom that I'm going to teach you is another example of that. When you want to ask someone if they are being serious because what they said is either so shocking and surprising or you're just, you don't really believe it, instead of just saying, are you serious? You might say, are you for real? And sometimes as slang, we'll say, for real, for real? Is this for real? Like for real, for real? So we'll just repeat the phrase twice. For real, for real? For real. This just means like seriously, this is actually what happened. For real, for real. Another instance in English where we kind of use this repeating is when you like someone in a romantic way. You might say, I like like them. This means like you really like them in a romantic way, not just as a friend. I like them as a friend. No, I like like them. So this repeating thing is really interesting in English. I know a lot of other languages use this as well. Officially in English, it's just slang though. For real, for real? Have you ever been in a situation where you are so busy with so many different things going on in your life? Maybe you have a family to take care of. You have a job. You have a house. You have family members that need taking care of, older family members. And you just have so many things going on. You just think to yourself that you have to change something or the situation just isn't going to be good. You know, people are going to suffer. In English, we have a phrase for this exact situation. We say, something has got to give. Because if you do that to God's creatures long enough, something's got to give. This means there has to be a compromise somewhere. You have to, you know, stop doing something for someone or you're not going to be able to take care of all your responsibilities. Sometimes when we're frustrated with someone, we'd say something's got to give or I'm just going to get so angry and upset that I'm not going to be able to continue on working with you or having this relationship or whatever it might be. A lot of times people have a lot of financial obligations and they get themselves into debt. They owe a lot of people money and they have to stop spending money somewhere. Something's got to give or, you know, all these people are going to be collecting their debt and you're going to have no money to try to pay them. So when we say something's got to give in English, it just means that we have to make a compromise somewhere. We have to stop doing something or the situation cannot continue on and be a good situation. Sometimes when something very tragic or sad happens to you or you have a fear of something, you have to keep going in life and you have to, you know, change the way you feel or stop being so sad. In English, we say that we are over something when we get past these types of feelings. I don't know if anyone could ever totally get over something like that. For instance, if someone dies or you lose a pet, maybe your pet dog dies and you feel sad for a very long time and you feel like you can't even see other dogs because it just makes you so sad. Finally, you stop having these feelings and in English, we say we're over it. We are over our dog's death. Or maybe you're very, very scared of giving a speech in front of other people and you practice and practice and practice until finally you don't feel scared anymore. You can say, I am over my fear. So to be over with something, we usually say we're over a certain feeling, a negative feeling, and we can move past it and start doing what we wanted to do or stop feeling a bad feeling. This next phrase definitely started off in the English language as slang, but nowadays it is an everyday conversation. So I feel like I have to teach it to you. When we say that someone is throwing shade, I'm just trying to say, don't throw shade on our relationship. We mean that they are criticizing someone a little bit too harshly. Maybe you have a group of friends and one of the friends isn't there and, you know, let's just name her Becky. Your other friend, Rachel, says, oh, I hate it when Becky, you know, comes. She just thinks she's so cool. Don't you think that she has such a weird attitude? She's throwing shade at Becky. And sometimes it's not so obvious that someone is throwing shade. Maybe they're just being very passive aggressive. You know, they keep saying things like, well, Becky, yeah, Becky always does this. Becky always does that. They're not being super negative, but you feel like they're throwing shade. This just means you feel like they are criticizing someone passive aggressively. If you want to say to someone that they need to stop criticizing you, you can say, can you stop throwing shade? Can you stop throwing shade at me? That would be, can you stop criticizing me or saying negative things about me? Sometimes in life, when you have an opportunity come to you and you feel like it was really easy, you didn't have to go out of your way to get that opportunity. In English, we say that the opportunity fell into your lap. For instance, maybe a friend calls you and says, hey, I have two extra tickets to a concert on Friday. Do you want them? I can't go. You say, well, that just fell into my lap. Sure. That means you didn't have to go to a huge effort to buy some concert tickets or, you know, go online super early in the morning to try to purchase them. The tickets just fell in your lap. You just got them easily from a friend that didn't want them anymore. Sometimes in English, when we're kind of criticizing someone because they didn't have to work for something, you can say, well, that just fell into your lap. That means you got whatever opportunity or job or whatever it might be so easily, like you didn't have to work. Speaking of working, have you ever known someone who just likes to sleep the day away? If we want to say that someone just sleeps way too late, we often say, hey, don't sleep the day away. Now this phrase, the day away, we can use this with a lot of different actions. We can say, hey, are you just reading the day away? This means you're sitting and reading a book so long that the day is almost going to be gone. You're going to spend all your time doing that activity. Sometimes when I start cleaning, it feels like I'm cleaning the day away. I just cannot stop cleaning. It's using up all my time in the day. For crying out loud. You will hear Americans use this expression all the time and it's a more of a mild exclamation when you're a bit upset about something, you're surprised about something, or you're annoyed about something. And it's better than saying an inappropriate swear word. For instance, if you're driving and the driver in front of you is going way too slow for the flow of traffic, they're going well below the speed limit, you'll say, for crying out loud, why is this person driving so slow? So you'll definitely hear American speakers use this phrase when they're super annoyed at something or they're just kind of surprised. For crying out loud, I can't believe food has gotten so expensive. We're annoyed, we can't believe it. When we want to say that someone has done something a little bit too much, we say that they have overdone it. It's better to overdo it. Or if we want to warn someone not to do something so much, we can say, don't overdo it. So for instance, you might tell your children, don't overdo it on candy or don't overdo it on television. Or you could say, you know, I don't like my food super spicy, so don't overdo the spice. We use this phrase to mean don't do something excessively or too much. A lot of times when you're learning a new language, you don't understand why something is funny or you didn't understand why there was a joke in what a person has just said. We actually have a phrase that means just this. We say we've missed the joke. So sometimes you might have a joke and if a person doesn't laugh, you might say, oh, I think you missed the joke. That means, you know, you didn't understand why that was funny. Maybe there was something that happened earlier that you didn't know about or for some reason you didn't understand the joke. Or if you don't understand why everyone's laughing, you could say, hey, I missed the joke. What's so funny? So this phrase, to miss a joke, means someone doesn't understand why something was funny or a joke. One time I had a new job and the person who was in the same role as me before was very good at the job and so all of my new co-workers said, you have big shoes to fill. You have big shoes to fill following your husband like that. So when you say this phrase, you have big shoes to fill, it's an idiom that means there are high expectations for you in this role or position or job because the person who had the position before did really good things as well. Oftentimes when sports teams get a new coach, if the last coach was very successful and had won a championship, the fans of the team might say, you have big shoes to fill. In English, we have two phrases that you have to know that means that someone is indecisive. When someone is indecisive, they cannot make a decision. Sometimes we say they are wishy-washy. You're so wishy-washy. And sometimes we say they can't make up their mind. Wishy-washy or saying that someone can't make up their mind, it just completely means that they cannot make a decision or they cannot be sure about something. A lot of times we will be critical of politicians in the United States that seem to change their decision on something and we'll say they're very wishy-washy. So this term wishy-washy, it's definitely used in a more negative way than saying that someone is indecisive or they can't make up their mind. If you want to say almost the opposite of this last phrase, you can say that someone is sticking to something. You've never been able to stick to a decision. Oftentimes when we say that someone is very committed to a goal, they are not going to quit, we can say they are going to stick to their goal. This means they're not going to quit or change their mind on what they want to do. Maybe they said they are going to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. You would say that they are sticking to their goal of losing 50 pounds by the end of the year because they're exercising every day and they are eating healthy no matter what. Oftentimes in English we also say we're going to stick to our decision if we're not going to change our mind or be wishy-washy. We're going to make a decision, yes or no. Maybe our decision is yes on something and we are going to do it because we said yes. We are going to stick to our decision or stick to our promise even. When something has failed to meet your expectations, you can say that it was a letdown. You might be let down. So you can use letdown as a verb, meaning to disappoint someone or if you want to just describe a whole situation or a whole event or even a person as disappointing, you can say it is a letdown. Maybe you watched a movie on Netflix that someone said is so good, it's going to be amazing. You're going to be so surprised and thrilled at the movie. But when you watch the movie, you actually think it's pretty boring and you stop halfway through. You can say that movie was a total letdown. It was a disappointment. You might have heard this next phrase if you have a friend in English that uses a lot of slang. If we say we are all about something. Damn, I forgot all about it. It just means we're very enthusiastic about something and we want to do it or we agree to something. And the opposite, I'm not about that. It just means that you disapprove of it. You don't want to do it or you're just not enthusiastic or excited about it. For instance, your friend might say, what do you think about getting pizza tonight? You might say, I'm all about that if you love pizza. Or you could say, I'm not about that. I am on a diet. I cannot be eating pizza. Or maybe your friend suggests going camping. You can say, I am all about that. I love getting outside. Or if you are a person that prefers to go on vacation where you stay in a hotel and you don't like bugs or going outside, you might say, I am not about that. I do not want to go camping. There are two phrases that I want to bring your attention to in English that English speakers will use in their everyday conversations when they're telling a long story and they want to skip over some details and just give you a quick summary of the main point. So oftentimes you will hear English speakers either say to make a long story short or long story short. And another phrase that we use in English is all that to say. All right. All that to say. Yes, I like man. So we say all that to say you should never text while driving. So maybe you just told a long story about someone getting in a car accident and getting injured because they were texting while they're driving. And instead of telling all the details, you'll maybe just summarize and say all that to say, just don't text and drive. So you summarize your main point after you say all that to say. So like I had a long story, but here's the main point. So we'll say that or sometimes we say long story short. Another informal phrase that we'll use in English, and this phrase is, you know, there's not a certain definition of this, but you'll hear it in a lot of different contexts. It's to bust out something. You can't bust out of here. So when someone brings an item out that they either haven't had out and shown people in a long time, or, you know, they're just being very extravagant and extra when they bring it out, we say they're busting it out. So for instance, if your dad or your brother or someone in your family plays the guitar, but they don't play every day, maybe only on special occasions. And finally, they bring out the guitar and they sing Wonderwall. You can say, oh, my dad just bust out the guitar again. That means, you know, he brought it out and wanted a lot of attention. Sometimes parents will bust out old photos when you have a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend at your house, just to kind of embarrass you and, you know, show them these old things that they don't normally have out to see, but they're busting them out. They're showing them and it's kind of extravagant and extra. Another really funny way to use this phrase is we say like, where did you bust out those moves? This means like when someone starts dancing and you've never seen them dance before, you can say, where did you bust out those moves? They're really dancing and they're really into the song. Or sometimes we say just bust a move, which means, you know, someone is dancing in a really extra and extravagant way. So this phrase to bust out, you'll hear a ton in English conversation in everyday conversation. If you ever watch advertisements or commercials in English, you'll often hear the speaker say, something is right around the corner. Right, right, right around the corner to the right as you go out the door. So we're not talking about a physical location when we say it's right around the corner, but we mean that something is coming up in a short amount of time. So a lot of times in advertisements, they'll say Christmas is right around the corner. This means they want you to anticipate Christmas because it's coming up very soon on the calendar. Or you might say to someone, graduation is right around the corner. Have you thought about what you want to do with your career? So because you're going to graduate from college in such a short amount of time, it's important that you anticipate what you're going to do for a job next. If you ever want to ask someone's opinion on something in English in a very casual way, you might ask someone, what's your take? What's your take on all this, honestly? So when you use this phrase, what's your take? It just means the exact same thing as, what's your opinion on this? Or sometimes we say, do you want to hear my take? This means, do you want to hear my opinion or my view of the situation here? Sometimes on podcasts, I hear the host say, you know, I have a hot take on this. This means that they have a controversial opinion on something or a very original opinion on something that not a lot of other people might share. In a business situation, your boss might say, you know, now that I've told you guys how I feel about this, I want to hear all of your takes on it. This means all of your opinions. So in English, we can use take and opinion interchangeably. I would say take is a bit more casual, but it's becoming more and more popular in everyday speech. You may have heard an English speaker before warn someone to not get ahead of themselves. Don't get ahead of yourself. This phrase is used to caution someone of being too confident about a situation. So for instance, maybe your friend starts dating someone else and your friend is very excited about this new relationship and they're already thinking about their future marriage and their future children. You might want to say, hey, don't get ahead of yourself. You're not even sure if you guys are going to go out on another date or officially become boyfriend, girlfriend. So you're telling the person, you know, don't assume that all these future events are going to happen. Or maybe, you know, someone's really excited about a new job and they're like, I am going to be the boss of this company someday. You'll say, hey, don't get ahead of yourself. Like have your first day and see if you like the situation first before you start planning out your entire future based off getting this job. So the phrase is, don't get ahead of yourself. It's good advice to give to someone who's planning out way too far in advance, even though, you know, a lot of things aren't certain or for sure yet. There are so many idioms in the English language that have to do with cards or card games or gambling even. This next phrase is, if you play your cards right. Could be, you play your cards right. And you're telling someone if they make wise decisions, then something will happen. Often something very positive for them. So if you play your cards right, you might get to go on vacation soon. If you want to tell someone, you know, they should be nice to you because then you might do them a favor. You might say, if you play your cards right, I might buy you dinner. This means like, if you're nice to me, if you're polite, I'll pay for your dinner. So you're saying, you know, you have to act good in order to have this thing happen. So if someone has a job and they're saying, I hope I can get a promotion soon. You might say to them, hey, if you play your cards right, you will for sure get a promotion or a better job by the end of the year. Now you know 25 more useful English phrases. Make sure to watch the next English lesson from my channel. I teach you so many great phrases that you can use in your everyday conversations, just like these ones. And check out englishwithkayla.com to try out my English course, Upgrade to Native English Conversation. I'll see you guys in the next lesson. Goodbye.