IDIOMS ENGLISH SPEAKING PRACTICE WITH 9 IDIOMS RELATING TO VEGETABLES RACHELS ENGLISH
David and I are just two peas in a pod.
In this video, we’re going to go over
idioms relating to vegetables.
This is a follow-up video to the video we
did last week on vegetable vocabulary.
Two peas in the pod. This means two
people that get along very, very well.
Yeah.
And our son, Stoney, and his little best
buddy Elias are two peas in a pod when they’re together.
We went to the zoo with them recently and the kids are just running around having a great time together.
Yeah whenever we tell him that we’re
going to go see Elias,
all he does is say: “Elias! Elias! Elias!” until we get there.
That’s right.
They’re so cute.
Mushroom.
When something mushrooms, this means
it gets much bigger.
You can think of a mushroom stem, and
then the cap of the mushroom is much bigger.
Do you have an example of how you can use the verb mushroom in a sentence?
We were watching one of our recent guilty pleasures, the TV show about home renovations, and they
they were going to take out this wall
and it looked pretty simple, and I open up
the wall and they found that beehive
inside the wall and all these bees shot out.
So it look like a little project just moving a wall but the project mushroomed,
became much bigger because they had to get rid of the bees.
Mm-hmm.
You could also use the word ‘balloon’ as a
verb in exactly the same way.
When something unexpectedly gets much bigger.
The phrase ‘to spill the beans’ this means to tell a secret.
So if you have an important secret, you want to entrust it to somebody that you know will not spill the beans.
I had a friend recently tell me she was pregnant, but she wasn’t telling everybody yet.
So I had to keep it to myself.
She said: You’re not going to spill the beans, are you? I said: No. My lips are sealed.
My lips are sealed, of course, means I won’t tell anybody.
It doesn’t literally mean…
It means they’re good at keeping a secret.
Couch potato.
This is somebody who is lazy, who
spends a lot of time on the couch,
watching TV, and maybe eating potato chips.
Right.
And are you feeling like that?
I’m feeling like that.
I am 35 weeks pregnant and there just hits a certain point in the day where I have no energy,
and I just lay down on the couch, I have people bring me things as need, I am definitely a couch potato right now.
Couch potato.
We also have the term ‘hot potato’.
So if a potato is really hot, `you can’t really, you don’t want to touch it, you want to throw it up in the air.
Idiomatically, it means a topic that is very controversial,
and you might not want to touch it because there’s such strong opinions on either side of the topic.
Yeah and an example would be social security, which is part of our social welfare safety net in the US,
and politicians don’t want to touch it because it benefits older Americans who vote in high numbers,
and who have contributed to that system
across their entire working life.
And so any threat of decreasing the benefits for Social Security is a political non-starter.
It’s a hot potato.
Nobody wants to touch that.
Even know the system, kind of is really in trouble.
Needs some help.
And the way that it’s structured is going to be really problematic, still, nobody wants to touch it.
Hot potato.
Another potato idiom ‘small potatoes’.
This is also ‘small peanuts’.
In our podcast, where we were doing food idioms,
I talked about small peanuts ,and it has
the exact same meaning.
It’s… It means not important, or less important.
And I sometimes feel this way when I go
to a YouTube event and there are other
really big YouTubers there with the really big numbers.
I feel like I’m pretty small potatoes at a place like that.
Cool as a cucumber. Have you heard this one before?
This idiom means very level-headed, very…doesn’t get anxious, doesn’t get stressed out.
Just really is able to take things in, do
stuff well, stay focused.
And my example for this is my friend Justin.
So actually, in most of life, I am cool as a cucumber myself, I would say.
Pretty even, but on the soccer field,
I sort of, I’m kind of a hothead, I have a little bit of a temper, I’m all over the place.
It’s weird. I noticed that the one time I went to one of your games, I was like who is this guy.
Um, I played in college. It’s always been something that I’m really competitive about.
It’s one of the few things.
Anyway, I’m a hothead but my buddy Justin, who I always play with, he’s cool as a cucumber.
Nothing ruffles his feathers.
And if he sees me getting a little bit out of
line, it’ll kind of reign me in.
Wow, you used so many good phrases there.
Reign me in, you used ruffle… Ruffle his feathers, nothing can ruffle his feathers.
That’s true.
And you also said you’re a hothead.
So someone who’s a hothead sort of has a bit of a temper is a little aggressive,
so you’re a hothead only on the soccer field.
Right.
If someone ‘ruffles your feathers’, that
means they bother you.
You could also say they ‘get under my skin’.
Yeah.
So like someone who’s playing really aggressively with you may be crossing the line, another idiom,
of like a foul.
That might ruffle your feathers.
Quite a bit.
And then Justin reigns you in.
That means if you’re getting a little too hot-headed, he comes over and he says: hey man, chill out, it’s fine.
That’s right.
Bring it back to normal.
That’s right.
Okay.
Well, sometimes when you’re
talking about it idiom, it’s so hard to describe situations without using other idioms.
It really is.
It’s incredible.
‘Carrot-top’ this is a phrase that you might use for somebody who has red hair.
Top of the head, carrot.
Carrot top.
There’s actually a comedian who I feel like was somewhat famous when I was growing up,
who went by the name Carrot Top. It was his stage name because he had orange hair.
The phrase ‘to pass or extend the olive branch’.
This is like when you’ve had an argument with somebody, and you make the first move
to reconcile with them, to make up, to be friendly, that’s you extending an olive branch.
Those are some of the vegetable idioms we thought of. Can you think of any other vegetable idioms?
Put them in the comments below.
And if you missed the video last week on vegetable vocabulary, be sure to check it out.
There are some interesting things to learn there.
David, thanks so much for joining me for this video.
That’s it guys and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.