Have you ever heard an English speaker say something that doesn’t make sense to you at all? You understand the WORDS, but you don’t understand what they mean. All the other native English speakers seem to understand, but you wonder “what do cats and dogs have to with the weather”? These expressions are called idioms, and they are a lot of fun to use.
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So, what are idioms? Idioms are phrases and expressions which have a special meaning which is hard to understand from the individual words in the phrase. These idioms usually have a connection to something that happened in the region, or in other words, they are colloquial. Idioms are also a very important element in everyday English and will add some color to your English use and understanding. So let’s look at 5 common idioms:
It's raining cats and dogs:
This is the idiom I was referring to at the start of the video, and it is used to say that it is raining very heavily. This idiom comes from a time when people had grass roofs. A lot of mice and rats would try to live there and people had cats and dogs to help solve that problem. When it started to rain heavily, the roof would become slippery and that would cause the cats and dogs to slide off the roof. So, when it was raining heavily, it was like it was raining cats and dogs because of the animals sliding off the roof. Pretty interesting huh?
Break a leg:
If you tell someone to break a leg, it actually means the opposite of what you are saying. This idiom usually means “good luck” or “have fun”, and originated in theatre. Superstitious actors believed that wishing them good luck would actually give them bad luck and because of that they would wish bad luck on each other with the same idea that it will give them good luck instead. You can imagine that breaking your leg while performing would be very bad luck, so that is where that idiom comes from.
Too many cooks in the kitchen:
We use this idiom when we want to say there are too many people in charge of a situation. Just imagine how scary it would be to have 5 Chef Gordon Ramsey’s in a kitchen together trying to achieve different goals.
It’s not rocket science:
This expression is used when saying a task or concept isn’t difficult. Usually, you will hear this expression when someone is getting frustrated with another person for not understanding how to do a simple task.
A blessing in disguise:
Have you ever had something bad happen to you, only to later realize it was a good thing? Maybe you couldn’t buy the thing you wanted today, but found it soon after at a massive discount… When something like that happens, it’s called a blessing in disguise.
And that’s it for this video! Thanks for watching it to the end and don’t forget to like and subscribe to see more fun English videos. See you again next time!
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