Most Common English Idioms.

If you're ready to take your English to the next level, make sure to study this list of idioms with me today. I'm going to teach you 30 useful phrases that are essential to speaking in everyday English conversation, and these idioms will help you level up your English. If you want to learn more like this lesson, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com and become one of my students there on my monthly membership, and I can be your English teacher. Now let's get started with this lesson. Let's start with some idioms that are helpful in daily life, but also very essential to work life and professional life in English as well. The first idiom is to get the ball rolling. Let's get the ball rolling. That's exactly what I'm doing by starting out this lesson with this idiom. If you want to talk about just starting a project or starting a task, starting a meeting, you can use this phrase. It's kind of casual, but again used in professional context. Let's get the ball rolling on this meeting. Hey, who wants to get the ball rolling right now? That means who wants to speak first or like start the meeting, whatever it is. So you can use this phrase just to mean to start something. An essential workplace idiom is to be on the same page. Same page, same page. If you're on the same page, it means you have the same understanding or the same knowledge as someone. You might have actually learned this idiom or have used it before, but make sure you're using this idiom to kind of check in with someone. So, hey, let's make sure that we're on the same page before we get the ball rolling. Or let's make sure we're on the same page before we start the next task, whatever it is. It's very common in like business and teamwork situations. Like you want to make sure everybody has the same understanding or the same perspective before you start something. Let me know if you agree or disagree, but it's important to make decisions that will benefit you in the long run. This phrase in the long run just means the future. So, of course, you want to make a decision that isn't only going to be beneficial right now, but is also going to be beneficial in the future. Sometimes it's important to make a sacrifice in order to see, you know, success in the long run. For instance, investing your money today will help you in the long run, even though you want to go spend your money on new clothes or going out to eat or whatever it is. When we use this phrase, we are just talking about over a long period of time, we'll see the benefits. So this is not the exact thing as saying eventually, it's saying in the future. And you're saying for sure it will help you in the future if you say in the long run. Or you could say, you know, this decision, if we do it like this, will hurt us in the long run. So even though it will benefit us today, it will hurt us in the long run. So you can use this with good things or bad things for the future. One phrase that I always like to emphasize to my English learners is at the end of the day. English speakers use this so casually, so commonly. At the end of the day, you know, it's important that we value our family. At the end of the day, money and cars don't matter. It's, you know, your relationships that matter. So it's kind of summarizing everything, you know, it's saying with everything considered, you're saying the main point or the important point. And a lot of times we use this phrase with important lessons like the examples I just gave you. So this phrase at the end of the day doesn't at all refer to nighttime, bedtime, or the actual end of the day. It just is used to summarize a main point. Have you ever been finishing a very important project and then all of your work is lost either because of a technical issue, like your computer just dies or crashes and doesn't save everything, or you find out some new information that just changes everything about what you were trying to get done? You could use this phrase then. It is we are back to square one. Back to square one. We're back to square one. So I like to think of this phrase as like chess. You have to put all your pieces back and restart the game on the first squares that the pieces start at. So back to square one, or if you're in a board game, you have to go all the way back to the first square. This means you've lost all your progress, you have to throw everything out completely, go back to square one. We use this phrase all of the time figuratively to mean we have to start over. Oftentimes if we have a setback or again some sort of failure, we have to go back to square one. Whenever I've started a new job, I always say it takes, you know, a few months to really learn the ropes and start to feel comfortable. You need to learn rope. This phrase, to learn the ropes, it is an older phrase but it's still used pretty commonly to say that you need to learn how things work. You learn the rules and how to do things. So oftentimes this phrase is used when starting a new job or even if you're at the same job but you have new responsibilities, you say I'm kind of learning the new ropes of this responsibility. So this just says, you know, there's no actual ropes involved, we're talking about rules, and we're talking about routines. Another phrase that many English speakers use every single day is they call it a day at the end. Call it a day. When you use this phrase, I'm going to call it a day here, it means you're going to be done. So either you're done with work completely, like I'm going to call it a day, or maybe you're just working on one particular thing and you say, okay, I'm going to pause here, I'm going to call it a day with this. So you could be talking about just one task or one job that you're doing, or you could just be talking about your entire workday being done completely. Sometimes I'll text my husband, hey, when are you coming home from work? How are things going? And he'll say, I'm going to call it a day in about an hour. So that means he's going to end his workday in an hour. A really interesting idiom to say that somebody is in trouble and probably pretty big trouble is to say they're in hot water. You could say they're in really hot water because they accidentally deleted a ton of important files, or you could say they're in hot water with their boss for showing up late every single day this week. So it's things that are a bit more serious than a casual mistake. This next idiom is really important for work life and just family life in general. You want to make sure that you're pulling your weight. So if you're pulling your weight on a team or in an office, you're doing your fair share of the work. So it's divided up evenly and you're actually making an effort to get your things done. When we talk about a household, usually we say like you need to pull your weight, meaning you either need to do some chores or tasks around the house, like laundry or dishes, or we could say financially you need to pull your weight. You need to pay you know a certain amount of the rent or what is due for the house every month. If you want to tell someone that they are not contributing enough somehow in a team or in a house, you could say you're really not pulling your weight. That means you're not contributing enough whether you're talking about again tasks, chores, or money. The older I get, it's not that I'm becoming less ambitious, but I am becoming more realistic and I really try to not bite off more than I can chew when it comes to work or just projects in general. Don't bite off more than you can chew, Steven. I recently decided to paint my bathroom walls and kind of you know smooth them out so the texture was better, but I fear that I bit off a little bit more than I can chew and really I thought it would just be a quick weekend project, but now it's gone on for weeks because I just keep working on it little by little and I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I want it to turn out really good. So I bit off more than I could chew. I can get it done, but again it's more work than I anticipated. So when you say I bit off more than I can chew, you don't necessarily mean that you can't get it done, but it's just more work than you wanted to take on. So if you take on three projects at work, someone might say, hey how's everything going? You might be stressed out so you say, oh I just I bit off more than I could chew here with all three of these projects at one time. Truly one of the most common idioms you will hear people give a compliment with is, you hit the nail on the head. You hit the nail on the head, Mr. Gustaf. When we say this phrase, you hit the nail right on the head or just you hit the nail on the head, it means that they are exactly correct. They give you the answer that you were either asking the question for or they gave, you know, their analysis of something, their thoughts, their ideas about something, and you're like, you know what, your ideas are exactly right. You agree with them. So you can either mean you are exactly correct or I agree with you completely. You hit the nail on the head. You might be talking with a friend about a problem that you've been having and they might say, you know what you should do? You should do this, and you think that their advice is exactly correct and it's really good advice, and you could say, you really hit the nail on the head. That is what I should do. So you're definitely complimenting someone's thinking by using this phrase. Another similar phrase is, you knocked it out of the park. Knocked it out of the park, A+. To knock something out of the park means to do something extremely well, and this is definitely an American baseball idiom. When you hit the ball all the way out of the park into the stands, then it's called a home run. So sometimes in English we say that was a complete home run. This is the same. It means it's a very successful thing that you did well. You might give someone a compliment of their presentation that they've done, and you say, wow, you really knocked it out of the park on that presentation. That means they did very well. They explained things well. You know, it was interesting, and they just did a great job. This phrase is extremely common in American business English, and it's used for, you know, great success rather than just an average or good performance. Quite the opposite of these last two phrases. If you drop the ball, it means you have failed at something or you have made a mistake or completely forgot to do something. Drop the ball. I use this phrase the most when I forget to do something. Like, oh, I totally dropped the ball and I forgot to bring, you know, the dish that I said I would bring to the party. I'm so sorry. Just means that I completely forgot it. You know, it's not going to be there. I dropped the ball on my responsibility. You can use this idiom to drop the ball to be talking about a big mistake or even just a small mistake. It can go either way. So it can be serious or, you know, less serious. I always try to be the teacher that goes the extra mile for my students. I go the extra mile. This phrase means to do more than what is expected. So if you are just the type of person that goes the extra mile for your friends in life, you do things like maybe drop off a meal if they are having a tough time or if they're sick, or maybe you ask to watch their kids or their pets if they need it. You are always trying to do extra things for them and be a really good friend if you go the extra mile. Oftentimes we use this phrase in work situations when someone, you know, is doing things for other people or if they're in a customer service or sales situation and rather than just do the bare minimum, they do extra for the customer. They do extra to make their customer happy. We say they have gone the extra mile. So it's definitely a compliment. It's definitely a positive phrase to go the extra mile for someone. When we talk about regrets in life, we can use this next idiom, to miss the boat. I sure miss the boat, huh? So I think about this as literally like you can't decide if you want to go on a boat ride and the boat leaves. You miss the boat. You can't get on the boat after it leaves because, you know, there's no way of getting to it. So this is not a literal phrase. It's an idiom, of course. It means that you missed an opportunity that you had. A lot of people, financially, they think about all the stocks and investments they could have bought. Maybe you, you know, wish you would have invested in Apple many, many years ago. You missed the boat because now it's very expensive to buy Apple stock. So we really just use this phrase, to miss the boat, to talk about someone who missed an opportunity and it's too late to do it now. A long shot. I have you as a long shot's long shot. Okay, sometimes when we use this phrase, we're talking about doing something that's unlikely to succeed, but we're going to try it anyway. Or something that has low odds of happening or, you know, you're trying something even though you don't think it's going to be available or happen. Let me give you an example about how I would use this phrase. It's not always in work, but in my personal life, I, you know, was in the same city as where my friend lives and I called her and I said, hey, it's a long shot, but I wanted to see if you're home, if I could stop by and visit. So I know my friend is often busy and not always home. It has plans a lot. So it was kind of a long shot. And in this case, she said, no, I'm actually not home. So it was a long shot, but I thought I would check as long as I was close to see if I could visit. If you're setting a really ambitious or large goal, it might be a long shot, but it's always good to have really ambitious goals because you never know what you will be able to accomplish. When I was younger, I was a really good soccer player and oftentimes at soccer, we would have to run laps around the soccer field and you were not allowed to cut the corners. Corners you've cut, inconsistencies. This means, you know, taking a path across the corner rather than around the corner. So this phrase, it can be literal, like you're not allowed to cheat and take a shorter path. Or a lot of times in work or in just our everyday lives, if we want to do something the right way and not cheat at it or do it carelessly or, you know, try to do something in a cheap way without spending the money on it, we're cutting corners. A lot of times in the United States, we have problems with builders kind of cutting corners when it comes to building new houses and the quality of our newer houses has gone down because they're using cheaper supplies, they're using people that aren't as experienced at building, they're cutting the corners in order to try to make more money. But it's not good because in the long run, you know, our houses have less quality and they need to be repaired more. If you want to make sure that somebody is doing a very good and thorough job on a project at work, you can say make sure not to cut any corners on this, take your time, do it the right way. One really motivating phrase is you can say we are going to try to raise the bar here. Oh yeah, you've raised the bar. This means we're going to try to raise the expectations or the minimum that we should do on something. If you're trying to raise the bar on the quality of your product, you're trying to make it better. And you can say that the bar is the minimum that we're doing. So if you're raising it, the minimum is going up so your quality is going to be better overall. This phrase is really common. It's common in business, it's common in sports, and it's really common in education too. You know, our schools are always trying to perform better. They're trying to raise the bar on reading and math so that all kids are getting smarter and achieving more. When I was training for my half marathon, I often heard that people hit a wall at 10 miles in the half marathon. And if you're not familiar with the miles, 10 is, you know, towards the end. The half marathon is 13.1 miles. So a lot of people hit a wall there. We're really hitting a wall. Which means that they kind of feel like they're going to give up or they start to slow down significantly because they are running out of fuel or energy. That's why it's really important to try to eat lots of, you know, some sugar and some carbohydrates while you're running to give your muscles some energy so you don't hit a wall. So if you hit a wall, it can mean you stop making progress or you run out of energy to do something. Oftentimes, if you're working on a project for a very long time, and you just feel like you need to take a break because you're not really getting anything done anymore, you're starting to or you're thinking about the same problem and not coming up with an answer, you could say, I really hit a wall on this, I'm going to have to come back to it. When we're talking about getting work done, and we say we hit a wall, it means we're kind of frustrated with it, we need to stop and pause and come back to it. And then if you want to describe, you know, getting back to a project after hitting a wall, and you know, things are starting to go well, again, you're starting to get a lot of work done or go at your regular pace, you can say we are back on track. A lot of times, if you start a conversation with someone, and you know, you're talking about one specific subject, and then all of a sudden you start talking about something completely unrelated, like what you were doing last night, has nothing to do with the main subject of the conversation, you could say we need to get back on track. Let's keep talking about the original topic here. A lot of times when we are working on our fitness routines, working out, or losing weight, or again, training for some sort of running race, and we start to get out of our routine a little bit, we could say we are off track, and we need to get back on track. So we need to get back into our regular routine. One idiom that people don't even realize they're using when they speak English is instead of saying that two people have a good relationship, we say they get along. A lot of times with kids, when they make friends, we say, oh, they get along really well. Or if I ask my friends, hey, do your children like each other? Do they play with each other well? I say, do your kids get along well? So this is what we use instead of saying have a good relationship or treat each other nicely. And one thing to note with this idiom is you don't have to be really good friends with someone to get along with them well. You just have to be friendly and very nice to each other. If you give someone the cold shoulder, it means you're mad at them, but you're not telling them why, and you're not having a direct conflict with them. You're just kind of ignoring them intentionally. But the thing about giving someone the cold shoulder, which you probably already know, is that the person will definitely notice eventually, and you're probably hoping they'll say, you know, what's wrong? Or what did I do? They'll realize their mistake or something that they did bad to you by your treatment of them. This phrase is really common in television and movies, like they gave me the cold shoulder, or sometimes we say the silent treatment in English as well. If you see eye to eye with someone, it means you agree with them. Who don't see eye to eye? A lot of times we use this idiom to say that we don't agree with someone. We say we do not see eye to eye, especially if we're talking about politics. We could say we do not see eye to eye on politics, but we can still get along, meaning we can still be friendly or even friends. Hopefully that's the case with someone that you don't see eye to eye with on politics, because there's more to life than just politics. We can use the phrase to know someone inside and out, know your targets inside and out, to mean that we know them very well. We know their likes, their dislikes, we know all about their personality, and we've known them for a long time. We can also say we know something at work inside and out, like a process, like I know all the rules and regulations inside and out at this job, so it just means you know it very well. Is there someone in your life that rubs you the wrong way? This idiom means that it's someone that annoys you, and a lot of times we can't quite say why the person annoys us, just everything that they do seems to annoy us. For instance, you know, it's the way that they say things to you, or it's the way that they do things. It's not like super specific actions that they do, or they're not being intentionally mean or annoying, but they just kind of rub you the wrong way. Sometimes it can't, it doesn't have to be just a whole person that rubs you the wrong way. It could just be a small action, so like the way that she asked me that question really rubbed me the wrong way, so maybe they asked you something offensive. Personally, whenever somebody is talking badly behind their friend's back, so their friend's not there, and they're telling me something negative about someone that they consider a friend, that really rubs me the wrong way. I think that's not a good way to treat people, and gossip is really toxic and bad. You may have been in a meeting at work or at a school, and the teacher or the boss says, hey, let's have some ice breakers, or let's break the ice. This just means let's make people feel comfortable by starting the conversation, and sometimes when we have ice breakers, it's questions that are meant to, you know, teach people more about yourself and just kind of start a conversation, even when it doesn't feel natural to break the ice. So it's really common if you're on a date or in a new social situation to try to kind of break the ice by bringing up an interesting topic or telling an interesting story or just introducing yourself to break the ice. To keep someone in the loop. Like keeping me in the loop. This phrase is very corporate. It's very workplace to me. If you say, I'll keep you in the loop, it means I'm going to keep you informed about a situation. You can also use this with your friends if there's something going on that you'll keep them updated on. So you can keep someone in the loop. If you're on email, you can use this phrase in writing or you can just say this on the phone or in person. You might have a phrase like this in your first language, but the idiom to read between the lines means to understand a hidden meaning or a hidden message. Reading between the lines. Sometimes people say something, but if you kind of read between the lines, they're also trying to warn you or tell you something else. So it's not a direct message, but it's something that's implied. Maybe you go to somebody's LinkedIn and they say, I'm actively looking for new opportunities. You might kind of read between the lines here and you might see that this person doesn't like their current job and they want to quit. Even though they said it in a really professional way, they're looking for a new job. They're looking for new opportunities actively because they don't like their current job. So you're kind of reading between the lines here. They didn't actually say that they didn't like their job and they wanted to quit, but you might, you know, kind of see that it's implied by what they said. To put yourself in someone else's shoes. For once, put yourself in someone else's shoes. This idiom is so common. It's so classic. If you say, well, I really just kind of put myself in their shoes and I would think that I would want them to, you know, treat me this way. So this means that you're kind of trying to see things from their perspective. You're trying to imagine how they feel. And this is really important in life, obviously, to be an empathetic person, to really try to see people's perspective. And so you can treat them nicely and treat them better. Sometimes instead of saying put yourself in their shoes, you can advise someone to, you know, think about walking a mile in their shoes. What would their life be like? So we either say put yourself in their shoes or walk a mile in their shoes. The last idiom in today's lesson is to get something off your chest. I mean, why not get something like that off your chest? When you tell something to somebody that you've kind of been holding inside or you've had to keep a secret for a while or, you know, you tell them your true feelings about something even though you're a little bit worried that it might offend them. After you tell them, you say, ah, felt good to get that off my chest. This just means like it doesn't feel so stressful and it feels good to be honest after holding in information for so long. It doesn't always necessarily mean that the information is negative, but maybe you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings or maybe it's just something really important that you haven't had the chance to tell them yet. If you've enjoyed this lesson, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com. I'd love to give you a challenge using all of these idioms. I have quizzes available every single week in a whole community that you can ask questions about the phrases and idioms I teach here. Thanks again for watching. If you're in the mood, check out another English lesson that I have that will expand your vocabulary just like this one, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.