61 English Phrases to Sound More Natural & Confident

Right off the bat. Wow! Beautiful! Right off the bat. So, if you know this idiom, you know that it means from the beginning. A lot of times, English speakers use this idiom very casually like, oh, right off the bat, I knew something was wrong. So, that means in a situation, you could sense that something was wrong or sometimes we say off immediately. It means immediately, from the beginning, right off the bat. Think of this idiom like a baseball idiom. If you're hitting with a bat, right when the ball strikes it, you can kind of get a sense of whether the ball is going to go far or if it's not going to go very far. You can sense right off the bat. Another idiom that is fantastic for casual conversations is to wing it or to wing something. Winging it. Oh, you're winging. If you've ever just done something and you haven't prepared for it at all, you might say to yourself, I'm just going to wing it today. This means that you're going to do it without any preparation, without any plan. You're just going to do your best, even though you're unprepared. Sometimes, if you're just giving a quick presentation and you just didn't have time to prepare, you might say, I'm going to go with no notes. I'm just going to wing it. I know enough about this topic that I should be able to give a good presentation. So, oftentimes, just winging it isn't a bad thing. It's just how we describe that we're going to do something without notes or preparation, especially an informal presentation. One thing that I do not like to wing is when I go to the grocery store and I don't have a list or a meal plan prepared, I do not like to wing it because then I buy way too much stuff that doesn't actually help me make meals for the week. And I go home with a bunch of snacks and random ingredients, and I spent way too much money. So, I don't like to wing it when I go to the grocery store. I like to be prepared and I like to have a plan. Hopefully, no one has ever thrown you under the bus. Whenever it's time to throw someone under a bus, this expression is very idiomatic. It means that someone has either betrayed you or has blamed you for something entirely. So, oftentimes, if you're in a workplace or if you're in a conflict with friends and you blame one person entirely, even though maybe it wasn't all their fault, or it's just not fair to reveal that it was all their fault, like place all the blame on them. It's really putting them in a bad situation. We could say that you're throwing them under the bus. This is the phrase that we use to mean that we're placing blame or betraying someone. Oftentimes, in the United States, in politics, politicians do not take accountability for anything, it feels like. And so, if you think of the presidency, you know, one president will just throw the last president under the bus for all the problems, and it keeps going and going and going. No one ever takes accountability. They're always just throwing the last person under the bus. This means they're blaming them entirely. Do you know what rock bottom means in English? What's your rock bottom? It's not just describing a place in the ocean. This phrase is used in a really idiomatic, not literal way to mean that it's someone's lowest point in life. We often say that someone needs to hit rock bottom in order to make a meaningful change, especially when we're talking about people with addiction problems or just problems in life. Once you hit rock bottom, you feel like you need to make the change within and actually improve your life. So if someone is homeless, we would say that's probably a rock bottom for them because it doesn't really get much worse than if you don't have a home. Or if you're just going through a situation in life and you're like, I feel like I'm just in such a bad place because I feel like I'm at rock bottom. It doesn't always mean you have an addiction problem or like a homeless problem, but it can just mean like you feel like you're at such a low point. You're talking about the past. It could say that's when I hit rock bottom and then I made a change and improved myself. This is the most common way that we use this expression, to hit rock bottom or just rock bottom. If you've ever told a lie and then it just makes you feel guilty, you might need to come clean. I'll come clean. This expression, come clean, to come clean, it's used to mean that you're telling the truth after either lying or hiding something. When I was a kid, I got a cell phone. Maybe I was like 14 or 15 years old. And I was so excited and I got the cell phone wet. Now, this is a long time ago when phones could not just get wet. They would just immediately break. And I went to my mom. I mean, this is so shortly after I got the phone. I said, my phone's not working. It's so weird. And she said, that's so terrible. Like we just bought this phone. So we went to the store and at the store they said, well, the phone's not working because it clearly has some water damage. And my mom looked at me and I had to come clean that I accidentally got my brand new cell phone wet. I didn't exactly lie, but I definitely was hiding the truth because I just felt so bad and so ashamed that I got this brand new phone wet. So this wasn't my proudest story ever, but we make mistakes, especially when we're younger. And I had to come clean and tell the truth. I felt really guilty and I was kind of pressured to tell what happened, especially at the store when they knew the phone had gotten wet. Here is an interesting phrase. It is one that is definitely advanced. You would need to be an advanced speaker to be able to use this phrase and to be able to understand it. If you've heard someone tell a story and, you know, give a detail about something and then they say, that tells you all you need to know, or that should tell you all you need to know. This means that whatever the detail was or whatever the story is kind of summarizes the whole situation. Or a lot of times if we have a person and maybe we dislike them or we like them a lot, it can go either way for this phrase and we tell a story about them and the story is, you know, saying how rude they are to say, well, and then they did this. That's all you need to know. Like that should tell you what you need to know. This means this story tells a lot about the person. For instance, maybe you see someone and they knock all your files and papers off your desk. Maybe it was even an accident, but you say, and they never even apologize. That should tell you all you need to know. This is implying that the person is very rude and this small microcosm, this small story really summarizes what they're like. Or again, going the other way. I saw recently a story of someone who was voting for the school board. Here in the United States, there's a school board and they have to get elected and they were saying that this person has always done things for the schools anonymously. They've paid for kids' lunches who can't afford lunch at school anonymously and they said that should tell you all you need to know about this person. This means that this person has done things even without recognition just to be a good person and they were saying that should tell you all you need to know about this person because they were trying to persuade people to vote for them for the school board. I just thought that was an interesting story and how these small acts can really tell you all you need to know about a person and their character and their morals. So when you use this phrase, you're giving a really confident opinion about someone. Just like in this story, the person was very confident that you should vote for this person for the school board and they were giving their opinion in a really confident way by using this phrase. One phrase that native speakers use all the time in conversation is last minute. Last minute replacement. We definitely tend to use this phrase as an adjective. Like I have to make some last minute plans or I have to make some last minute changes before I have to turn this in for the deadline. So usually when we use this phrase last minute, we mean that we're doing something either right before a deadline, right before it's due, or right before the last moment where we can't make any more adjustments or do any more work on it. We typically use this for projects, plans, or anything in the workplace that has a deadline. The other day, one of my son's friend's moms texted me and I said, I know this is super last minute, but would your son like to go this place with us? So usually, you know, you make plans a couple days ahead or even just earlier in the day for later, but they were like leaving right now. They had just decided they were going to do this. So it was last minute, meaning sorry that I didn't give you an advance warning, but we're going to leave now. Does this work? A lot of times in English, instead of saying time is passing really quick or it feels like time is passing quick, we say time is flying by. The months will fly by. Or, you know, at the end of the year, when it's usually November or December, we say, oh, it feels like this year just flew by. This means that the time felt very quick. Oftentimes when you have a new baby and all of a sudden they're one year old, you can say, oh, time just flew by. I can't believe they're already one year old. So we just use this expression very commonly to say time is passing quickly or a lot of times when we're feeling very sentimental about getting older or kids getting older, we say time has flown by or the years have flown by or their childhood has flown by. Time flies by. We use this idiom meaning time moves quickly or it feels like it moves quickly. And the opposite of saying that the time has flown by would typically mean be, we say time has dragged on. And we use this in a scenario where it feels like, you know, we're waiting for something to happen or we're waiting for something to be over. And it feels like the time is taking a long time. So we either say time flies by when things are going well or feel like things are going easy or quick. Time drags on when it's the opposite. 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 and 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, you know, 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. 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 procrastinate, 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. Let's get 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. You get along with it. 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, you're giving me 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. 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. I'll 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 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 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 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 give someone a thumbs up on something it means it gets your approval. We'll give a thumbs up. Yeah. A lot of times in the United States we talk about movies as getting two thumbs up meaning it was very good. It was pretty good. Now if we say oh yeah you get the thumbs up on that that means I approve of it it's good. You know it's not neutral but it's just saying like I like it it's good but it's not saying you know this is the best. Thumbs up means good or literally we might just say hey I give that a thumbs up. You might not literally put your thumbs up to say good but in the United States this is what we mean when we say that something gets a thumbs up. Your friend maybe they're not actually an artist maybe they make a picture they draw a picture for you and they say what do you think of this and you might say I give it a thumbs up that means I approve of it it's pretty good. You're not saying it was amazing and you're not saying it was bad you're just giving your approval. One phrase that I used the other day in my natural English I was like I need to teach my students this phrase is scratch that. Scratch that. So sometimes if you're thinking out loud maybe you're just kind of casually saying your ideas you're thinking and you're saying what you're thinking at the same time you might say something that is not exactly what you want. So you might say ah scratch that that means take that off the list or erase that pretend like I didn't just say that we're going to change what we're doing here. So the other day I was telling my husband what I needed from the grocery store and I say can you just buy a gallon of milk and then I say scratch that actually two two gallons of milk we're going to need more. So it's kind of like you're going back on what you just said because you realized that you need more of something or you need something changed you need it different. Scratch that I'm going to need this instead. So it just means forget that or erase that. It's a really nice common idiom that we use in the United States. Do you know what it means to pick favorites? You pick your favorites. When we talk about picking favorites we usually are talking about parents grandparents teachers you know they're kind of giving favoritism towards either a group of students or children or just one in particular. So sometimes we say good parents should not pick favorites. So if there's you know they have many siblings in the family they shouldn't say oh this kid's my favorite or they shouldn't treat one kid better than the other. Same with teachers or you could just kind of jokingly say this in a workplace as well like hey don't pick favorites to your boss. So you can use this in a joking way like I just did like haha are you picking favorites meaning you're treating one person better than the rest because you like them more or you can use this in a serious way as well like that coach tends to pick favorites and he only plays the players that he likes rather than saying you know they treat everyone fairly. So when we use this phrase pick favorites it means they treat people better than others depending on who they like. They don't give fair treatment to everyone. This next phrase it's a little complicated to start using but it's really a nice phrase to have and to be able to start using. So I'm going to teach it to you. So there's something to be said about learning English online. And there is something to be said. When I say this it means that there are a lot of benefits for learning English online. It's the exact same way but this is how we naturally say this in English. There's something to be said about working from home. This means working from home has a lot of benefits. It's good. Or you might be thinking about you know how busy you want to be and you might say there's something to be said about having no plans on a weekend meaning it's nice to be free and have no plans and not be super busy on a weekend. So this is used in really casual contexts when you want to express how good or how beneficial something is. There's something to be said about waking up early in the morning and exercising right away. It means there's something to be said. It means there is a benefit to this. One phrase that my husband always uses is a stick in the mud. You are such a stick in the mud. If someone is not being fun they're being very strict they don't want to try new things he'll say you're being a stick in the mud or that person's a stick in the mud. Oftentimes if I'm not being very spontaneous or very flexible he'll say stop being such a stick in the mud. So this isn't a super insulting phrase like I don't get really mad when he says this but it just means you know be more flexible be more open have more fun instead of being a stick in the mud. If someone is really boring and they don't want to try new things you could use this phrase. It's not super insulting it's pretty playful but it's a good phrase to use when you're trying to get someone to have more fun and to lighten up. This next phrase if you've ever been to a really great restaurant you've been on a great vacation you can use this. So if you want to say that a restaurant was really good you can say it was top notch. Top notch. That restaurant was top notch. The food was top notch. The service was top notch. The vacation we went on was top notch. You're just saying everything was the best or extremely high quality when you use this phrase. Top notch means the same as high quality in English. This idiom is just used when we're describing things that were really great experiences. So we often use this when we're talking about certain products like food, restaurants, hotels and a lot of times we're using top notch to describe our experience or to describe the skills that someone has or the service that they gave. We don't necessarily say that shirt is top notch to mean it's really good but you could say the quality on this shirt is top notch meaning it's not going to fall apart easily or get damaged easily. It feels like it was well made. Have you ever heard an English speaker say that something was off kilter? Feels off kilter. So off kilter we can use this to mean that something is unbalanced. Like you could say my chair is off kilter right now meaning it's wobbling or that table looks a little off kilter meaning it's uneven or unbalanced. A lot of times we use off kilter to mean that something didn't feel quite right. That conversation was off kilter. I feel like that person wasn't being super honest. So this would be a way that we use this more idiomatically to mean like just something was off. It didn't feel like completely usual. It felt unusual. It doesn't mean there's a big problem. You could say my stomach felt a little off kilter yesterday. This means it felt a little sick like maybe you didn't bar for having any big problems but something just didn't feel settled in your stomach. You felt just a little bit sick, just a little off kilter. It was off kilter. In the news or in your everyday conversations you might hear the phrases high stakes or low stakes. A thrilling high stakes adventure. It's a very low stakes situation. If something is high stakes it means that it's very serious and it's going to have serious consequences. So you might say this decision is really high stakes. Now if you say don't worry it's just low stakes it means no matter what happens it's not going to have big consequences. So a presidential election we might say has some really high stakes. You know whoever wins they could send us into this war. They could spend money on this in our country. In the United States when we talk about politics we usually say things are high stakes meaning they're very important. Now when we think about decisions in our everyday life like what am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? Who am I going to hang out with? A lot of times these are low stakes meaning they have low consequences. So like maybe I wear a red shirt. Don't worry it's low stakes. I can wear the blue shirt tomorrow. It's not going to have high consequences. Another common way you'll hear these phrases used you could say the stakes are high here meaning that the consequences are going to be big. So a lot of times in sports we say you know this is the championship game. The stakes are high meaning whoever wins will win the championship and whoever loses will lose the championship. So obviously you can use this phrase in many different ways or if you say the stakes are low don't worry. You're telling a person that they shouldn't be so stressed about a decision or stressed about their actions because whatever happens they will be okay. There's not huge consequences. Many times we talk about plans, comments, jokes backfiring on us. What does backfire means? It backfires. This means that whatever we wanted to happen the opposite happens instead. So for instance you might try to make a joke to make a situation more funny or more light but instead the person takes offense to your joke and they get more serious and they get angry at you. So you could say well that joke really backfired. I'm sorry. Or maybe you have a plan to save money and you try out the plan and instead you end up spending more money. You could say my plan really backfired here. I ended up spending way more money. You might have an old boyfriend or an old girlfriend and you want them to be jealous of you know your new boyfriend or your new girlfriend and you kind of show them you post some pictures online of you and you know you text that person like what do you think of my new boyfriend? They might say he seems cool like have fun like I don't want anything to do with you. You might say well that plan really backfired. I didn't make them jealous. I actually made them more uninterested. So something like that could backfire. We either say the plan backfired or the plan backfired on me meaning it did not work how I wanted it to. It worked the opposite. Do you know what it means when an English speaker says that didn't sit right with me? And that does not sit right with me. We use this in a few different scenarios. So when something feels wrong or uncomfortable maybe because you think you know someone was treated poorly or something was morally wrong someone lied or maybe you just ate some food that upset your stomach and made you feel a little bit uncomfortable. We use this phrase it didn't sit right with me. That meal didn't sit right with me. For some people especially in the United States who haven't grown up with really spicy food if they go out to eat let's say they're eating Indian or Thai food and it's very spicy it might not sit well with their stomach. It didn't sit right with their stomach. This just means it upset it. It made it uncomfortable. It doesn't mean they got food poisoning or they were sick but they were maybe just a little bit uncomfortable. If someone tells a lie and you are aware that it was a lie but you didn't feel like you needed to speak up or say anything you could say it just didn't sit right with me like it made me feel uncomfortable or weird or you know my conscious felt guilty and sometimes we might not know that someone is lying or doing something bad but we just have a gut feeling is what we say. I have a gut feeling and that just means it didn't sit right with you. It just doesn't feel good. Something feels just a little bit off and you feel like the situation is wrong. You have a suspicion. Another phrase that's pretty similar in my opinion is to say it's not a good look. That's not a good look. So it's kind of vague but it's basically saying that something is making someone look kind of bad or unprofessional you know just not super polished. So for me my kids are a reflection of myself and I do want them to go to school with their teeth brushed clean fingernails clean clothes combed hair if they go to school every day looking just kind of like they rolled out of bed and nobody took care of them for me it's not a good look. I don't want people to think that I'm not taking really good care of my kids or you could say you know to show up late to an important meeting it's not a good look. It shows that you don't care. So if someone says to you hey doing that wasn't a good look it might just mean that it was a little bit unprofessional like you need to judge the situation a little bit better be more polished to be on time things like that. So we talked about the phrase this says everything you need to know or it says a lot sometimes we say. Another really professional phrase that you can use to say that somebody's actions or behavior is really important it tells you you know about who they are truly as a person is it speaks volumes. And yet it speaks volumes. So going back to my example of the woman who was running for the school board here she you know paid off students lunch debt she was paying for their lunch even though their parents couldn't afford it and she was doing it anonymously meaning she was not asking for credit she didn't want everyone to know but some people took notice when she went to the school and made the payments. So people said that speaks volumes about her character that she was doing these good deeds without a ton of recognition meaning it's really good it's such a good deed that it shows she is a good person at heart. Sometimes in life when you have something negative to say you need to frame it in a better way. In English we use this phrase to frame something to mean to present something in a certain way or at a certain angle. Let me give you a few examples of how we actually use this phrase and some common ways that it's said. So first if you make a mistake or someone you know makes a mistake you can say well it's a learning experience you're framing a mistake as a positive thing which I agree with mistakes are natural and mistakes are important because that is how we learn. Now we can frame it in a positive way or we can say you made a mistake that's terrible you messed up so now you're framing it in a more negative way. Another thing that corporations and big companies do is they frame things positively so that they don't bring negative attention to their company. So for instance if a big company here in the United States fires a bunch of employees or lays them off because you know they need to make cuts they might say well we needed to streamline operations and this is just framing it as a good thing for the company like a positive thing but most people would frame it as a lot of people lost their jobs without a day's notice so this would be a more negative way to frame the big layoff. Sometimes when you're asking someone to have permission to do something or to try something out you're going to want to frame the proposition or the question in a positive way instead of saying I'm not going to do it the way that we normally do it you might say we're going to actually try something new that's going to be really efficient so you're framing your question or your proposition in a way more positive way. If you hear someone in English say then it hit me I thought I recognized you when we met at the station but it hit me later on your wife was murdered it doesn't mean that something literally smacked into their face we're talking about a realization or a thought that comes to you later after the fact if something hits you it means it's a realization or an idea that happened later after something you heard or something you witnessed or something that was said to you a lot of times I hear people talk about how important gratitude is and even in tough situations it's important to be grateful for the good things that you have or the challenges that you can overcome so a lot of times people say I have so much laundry to do I have so much cooking to do I have so many chores to do and they're complaining but later they'll say it just hit me I should be grateful that I have food and clean clothes and things like that so it's a realization that happens later and then it hit me a lot of times when you're trying to solve a problem sometimes you go to bed and as you're trying to fall asleep the answer will just hit you all of a sudden and that means you have a realization and suddenly you feel like you can solve your problem after kind of just laying in bed and thinking about it for a little bit so you might say the answer to the problem hit me hours later speaking of relationships when two people are really in love and then they slowly lose interest we can say they fizzled out fizzled out this means there wasn't like a big breakup there was no big powerful fights it just means they slowly slowly gradually lost interest and ended the relationship we can also use fizzle out for things when we're talking about my excitement fizzled out like I was really excited for my birthday but as it got closer my excitement kind of fizzled out I was like ah this is a lot of work to have a big party or whatever so when things are kind of gradually ending or gradually going down like excitement, emotions, a relationship we say they fizzled out sometimes we can literally talk about a light or a candle fizzling out meaning it's slowly you know dimming going down sometimes when you're in a conversation with someone and you start losing interest in the conversation or you start you know losing things to talk about you're kind of running out of things to talk about you can say our conversation kind of fizzled out meaning you know it started out like we were having a really good conversation and really you know clicking having good energy but it started to fizzle out and we didn't really care about it anymore we didn't want to talk to each other anymore not like you're fighting just like you're losing interest one phrase that I really like to use and I've taught before is to up the ante so this is kind of like raising the stakes or like raising the consequences or adding some motivation to something so for instance maybe you say let's bet ten dollars on this just to kind of up the ante you could think of ante as excitement or motivation here maybe you're golfing with someone and you're gonna say to up the ante let's bet a hundred dollars on this game so you're kind of increasing the risk and increasing the pressure on the game you're trying to make the situation either more competitive or more intense by upping the ante I used one of these phrases the other day so I had to write it down to teach you if you say that something is either a hard ask or a tough ask it's a tough one it means you're asking a lot of a person you're asking for kind of a big favor or you can't expect them to actually do this just out of the kindness or whatever it might be you can be at work and you can say I know this is a tough ask but do you think you can finish this by Friday I really need it meaning you know that it's kind of a favor you're asking someone to do something that's very difficult you're kind of showing the person that you know you're asking a lot of them or you're asking for something unrealistic by saying I know this is a tough ask or this is a hard ask and you can say to someone hey that's a really hard ask or that's a tough ask meaning you're asking me for something really unrealistic maybe your friend says hey could I borrow your car for a whole week you might say that's a tough ask I really need my car meaning that's you know asking for a pretty big favor this next idiom is really useful as well if we think about someone standing on a cliff you know not a real cliff but in their mind we call that an emotional edge if we say we're going to push them over the edge we gotta push them over the edge it means you can cause someone who's already stressed to become super overwhelmed and just make the situation really bad for them for instance maybe your friend has a really hard week they've been busy at work they've had some family problems and they're supposed to get on an airplane to go home their airplane their flight gets delayed so now they are pushed over the edge they're so overwhelmed and stressed out they already had a lot going on they say oh my flight getting delayed really pushed me over the edge this just means it became too much it was another problem on top of all my other problems a lot of times when we say that really just pushed me over the edge it means you have big problems going on and just a small thing really kind of push you over the emotional edge it made you really stressed out because you have too much going on so you can see this phrase is very useful for someone who's very busy and has a lot of work or things going on in their life in English if we can't think of a word that is good enough to describe something or describe a situation we can say well for lack of a better word it was and then you fill in the blank for lack of a better word let me give you an example here maybe you are at a party and two of your exes show up so maybe it's an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend two of them show up and you're at the party and you're like this is so weird this is so and you say for lack of a better word awkward meaning it's extremely awkward you just don't have the right word to describe it because the situation is kind of extreme or a lot of times you know if there's something very sad that happens you can say for lack of a better word this is such a tragedy meaning it's extremely tragic it's extremely sad you can't describe how sad the situation is with just words it shows that you can't really describe the situation with words you don't have the perfect word for it so you're just using what you have it's used often in extreme situations or it can be a good situation as well like for lack of a better word i am ecstatic right now this just means you're very very happy you've probably heard english speakers say whatsoever whatsoever this is kind of a dramatic expression we use to say at all let me give you an example because i know this word is kind of confusing for english learners you could say something like i am not interested in becoming famous whatsoever this just means at all like this sounds very unappealing for you so this just adds emphasis in any sort of situation you use this word for instance instead of saying i have no interest in becoming famous it's kind of neutral like it doesn't sound very good to you you can say i have no interest whatsoever it's becoming more dramatic you're emphasizing that you really don't want this thing when we talk about networking either just socially with old friends or in professional situations sometimes we say reach out to this person maybe you could reach out to someone this just means contact this person either if you've never met them before and they could be helpful to you or you might say i'm going to reach out to an old friend i've met them before but i just kind of want to talk with them again communicate with them kind of rekindle or restart the relationship so oftentimes we use this when we're talking about reconnecting with someone talking with someone we haven't talked to in a while or talking with someone new but sometimes we just say i will reach out to you on friday this just means like i'll talk to you on friday to see if you're available or you know i'm just going to talk to you at this later date it can be with a good friend or family member as well that you use this phrase on podcasts all the time i hear the hosts introduce a topic or introduce a guest at the beginning and then you know at the end of their introduction i'm not really sure the origins of this phrase but it just basically means like i'm not going to keep talking or keep introducing this person let's just get started it's kind of like a way to end your introduction without further ado i'm going to talk with kayla now or without further ado i'm going to introduce this topic that's important and you've been waiting for so i'm pretty sure ado just means like without further unnecessary talking or whatever it might be this is a really interesting phrase in english that you'll hear especially podcasts or any sort of talk television show or whatever it is you'll hear this phrase at the beginning an interesting phrase that i'm sure is used in other languages as well is when you want to say that you're going to give someone a last piece of advice or a literal gift before you leave you can say this is my parting gift give me a parting gift i just wanted to give you a parting gift here's this photo of us before i leave or as a parting gift i'm going to give you this advice it just means like the last thing before you actually leave either if you're leaving for a long time or you're going away to a far distance or just you know you can kind of use this in a more playful way like as a parting gift before i go for the day even if you're going to see the person tomorrow you can use this phrase sarcastically too if someone leaves you something that you didn't want you could say wow that was quite the parting gift like for instance if someone left you a big mess you must say oh thanks for the parting gift meaning thanks for this big mess before you left 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 contexts 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 is due 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 night time 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 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 work day 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 work day 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'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 learn fast pull 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 laundry or dishes or we could say financially you need to pull your weight you need to pay 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 Stephen 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 plus 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 missed 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 missed 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