How To Use English Animal IDIOMS
Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
Now it’s been a while since I’ve made you an
idioms lesson and since so many of you have been
asking for help with idioms lately, I thought
we’d better get to it!
There are just so many English idioms.
Do you remember what they are? They’re phrases,
whose meaning is different to the individual meaning
of each of the words in the phrase.
They’re a really tricky part of learning English.
There’s lots of them, thousands!
And some idioms are more commonly used in
some countries but not in others which is a little bit
frustrating when you’re trying to learn them, right?
Which ones are the ones that everyone uses?
There are some idioms that my American friends use
that I’m like, ‘What?’
and ones that I use that go
straight over their head as well.
That’s an idiom right there!
Native English speakers use them a lot.
They pop up in spoken English when it’s really difficult
to, you know, fully understand them
or stop the conversation and ask about the meaning
of how it’s used.
You’re just sort of left wondering
‘Why is he talking about an elephant?’
One little hint with idioms is that
there are probably some English idioms that are similar
to the ones that you have in your own language
like ‘crows feet’.
Crows feet are the wrinkles that people get here
caused by a lifetime of laughing and smiles or
maybe too much squinting in the sun.
But in English they’re called crows feet.
But these same wrinkles might have a similar idiom
as their name in your language. So if you do
have some sort of idiom for these wrinkles here,
I want you to add it to the comments right now because
I’ve heard a few of them before but I’m curious to see
just how many we can collect.
They’re ‘crows feet’ in English.
They kind of look like a crows foot.
Now you may have seen some of my other
idioms lessons, I’ve made quite a few
but you can find all of them right here
on my idioms playlist.
I’ll also link to it at the end of this lesson just in case
you want to keep practising
a little bit more with me later on.
But there’s business idioms, weather idioms,
food idioms, holiday idioms, body idioms.
They’re all there!
Now even though you probably feel like
idioms make a conversation confusing,
they’re also really fun and they’re a great
creative way to express yourself.
They really show off your English talents
like in a speaking exam for IELTS or TOEFL,
using an idiom correctly is quite impressive.
And before we get started, make sure you subscribe
to the channel just by clicking
that red button down there so that you can keep
up-to-date with what’s happening!
So we’re going to learn a few today.
We’re going to go over some common animal idioms,
starting with this one.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’
Now ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’
doesn’t mean that cats and dogs are
falling out of the sky.
It means that it’s raining and it doesn’t just mean raining,
it means raining really hard. It’s heavy rain.
It’s really rainy!
Now to be totally honest,
I don’t really use this idiom that much
but I come across it all the time in books.
So I wanted to include it here for you.
Usually I would say “It’s bucketing down”
if it’s raining really hard but
if it’s raining cats and dogs,
it’s probably best to stay inside.
Now speaking of cats, who let the cat out of the bag?
This idiom is used to talk about revealing a secret.
Now just imagine your sister told you that she was
flying home to surprise your mum for her birthday.
It’s a secret, right?
You can’t tell your mum
because it wouldn’t be a surprise.
If you did, you would let the cat out of the bag.
Your sister might say
“Please don’t tell Dad.
He’ll definitely let the cat out of the bag.”
The secret will be ruined because
dad can’t keep a secret
and the party wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, would it?
You can also ask the question:
Who told the secret?
Or you can apologise, you can say:
I may have spoiled the surprise.
Now I want to ask you,
have you got an addiction to something?
For me, it’s coffee. I’ve got a coffee addiction.
I can’t possibly give it up!
Well, the only way that I could do it is if I just went
cold turkey.
Now this one doesn’t make much sense.
Picturing a turkey who’s really, really cold
won’t help you at all.
But if you go cold turkey it means that you
stop doing something completely, a hundred per cent.
And we usually use it to talk about quitting addictions
like smoking, coffee, drinking,
even social media addictions.
We all know someone who’s addicted to their phone,
right?
Or maybe you are! Maybe you’re addicted
to your phone. Maybe you can’t put it down.
If you are, maybe you should think about
going cold turkey for a while.
So you’d delete Facebook, delete Twitter,
delete Instagram, Whatsapp, everything,
all forms of social media!
It has to be everything otherwise it’s not cold turkey.
‘Cold turkey’ means a hundred per cent.
Absolutely no.
Now you can use two verbs with cold turkey.
You can either say “go cold turkey”
or you can “quit cold turkey”
though that’s a little more American, American English.
So I’m curious, have you ever
quit anything cold turkey before
and completely stopped doing it?
Tell me in the comments.
Usually, it’s not so easy to go cold turkey.
What do you think?
Okay for the next idiom I want you to think of someone
that you know who’s very kind and gentle.
Well you can describe them by saying
they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Flies and mosquitoes are pretty annoying, aren’t they?
Especially here in Australia!
So someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly must be
so patient and kind, right?
So this is a really positive, affectionate idiom
and it’s used to describe a person.
So you can also use this expression
to reassure someone.
If they’re worried about trusting someone,
you might say to them
He’s the nicest guy that you’ll ever meet!
All right I think it’s really time we talk about
the elephant in the room.
Have you ever heard of this idiom?
The elephant in the room is the thing that
nobody wants to talk about.
So it’s quite specific, the way you use this idiom.
It’s when people are talking normally
but they’re all deliberately
not talking about a particular issue
but this issue is a big one. It’s like a big, huge
elephant sitting in the middle of the room that
is really obvious and it’s impossible
not to look at and you can see it, right?
But nobody’s talking about it.
The issue is something really obvious
but everyone’s ignoring it, right?
Or they’re trying to avoid it
probably because it’s an uncomfortable topic
or a difficult situation.
No one wants to talk about this, right?
Talking about money can be a little bit awkward,
especially with your boss.
This is a bad situation!
Why is no one in the room talking about it?
It’s definitely what everyone’s been thinking about.
Why haven’t I been paid?
It’s the elephant in the room.
We need to deal with this big issue, right?
This one is one of my favourite idioms.
It’s one that I use a lot.
When you have butterflies in your stomach,
it’s when you feel kind of nervous.
Do you know this feeling?
It’s that feeling in your stomach right before
you walk on stage
to speak in front of a hundred people
and present your research.
It feels like you literally have butterflies flying around
inside your belly, right?
Now think of anything that makes you feel so nervous
that your tummy starts to feel a little funny.
This can be described as
butterflies in your stomach, right?
You can use it to describe good nervous feelings
or bad nervous feelings.
When was the last time
you had butterflies in your stomach?
Do you know this feeling?
Tell me about what makes you nervous
and when you had this feeling.
For me, if I see
police lights in the rear-vision mirror in my car
when I’m driving, I instantly get butterflies in my belly
even if I’ve done nothing wrong!
You can say ‘stomach’ or ‘belly’ here.
‘Belly’ is just a little more informal,
it’s an informal way to say ‘stomach’.
Now you might also hear people just say
“I’ve got butterflies”
and they’re talking about this same idiom
unless that person has a jar of
butterflies with them in their pocket,
then they might be saying it and literally mean it
but that’s unlikely, right?
So here’s the next idiom: ‘a fish out of water’
Now if you see someone who is
uncomfortable in a specific situation
like your grandma, if she walked into a nightclub.
Then they look like a fish out of water.
She would feel like a fish out of water,
really uncomfortable, right?
She would feel completely awkward in a nightclub
unless you’ve got a super cool granny.
Or maybe when you get invited to a party
but everyone is a native English speaker,
you might feel a little like a fish out of water there.
Okay we’ve got time for one more idiom.
‘to open a can of worms’
Imagine a can full of worms.
It’s full of long, wriggling,
squirming worms that are all twisted together.
So when you open that can of worms,
you’re going to have a big mess.
They’re going to go everywhere!
It’s probably going to be really difficult to clean up
and try and catch them all, right? You’ll have
a lot more problems than when you started.
It’s easier when they’re in the can but if you open it
there’s going to be problems.
Or
So if you don’t want to create a tricky situation, then
don’t open the can of worms, right? It’s simple!
So those are some of the common animal idioms
that I tend to use quite often but there are more.
Do you know any other ones in English?
Or can you share the meaning of any animal idioms
in your own language?
Perhaps there are some similar ones in English
and we can chat about them in the comments.
And make sure you try and use
some of the new idioms that you’ve learnt in this lesson
below in the comments.
I’ll try and give you some feedback and help you
to make sure you’re using them correctly.
Thanks for joining me here again at the
mmmEnglish channel.
Make sure you subscribe if you haven’t already
and right now we’re going to check out
a few more videos about idioms, right here.
Let’s go!