Interesting English Idioms Everyday Phrases to describe how you FEEL
Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish
and today we are gonna be going over eighteen
everyday conversational idioms that will help you to describe
feelings and emotions. These are really useful idioms,
ones that I use all the time to describe
sadness,
happiness,
fear,
disgust,
anger
and surprise.
So that’s six different emotions and for each one,
there’s gonna be three idioms.
Now I’ve got a really fun and great little challenge for you at the
end so make sure you stick with me all the way through.
It’s gonna be an emotional roller coaster.
Have you heard that idiom before? It’s a bonus one.
I’ve added the meaning to it on the worksheet that I’ve created
for you. The link is down in the description.
I’ve got all of the idioms that we’re going over today
with the meaning and some examples to help you know
when and how to use them.
Plus there’s a little mini quiz to help you put everything
that you learn into practice.
Are you ready to get into it?
Let’s go!
Happy,
sad,
angry.
These are all really common adjectives that we can use
to talk about our feelings in English
but so common that they can sort of feel a little dull especially if
they’re the only adjectives that you use
to talk about these feelings.
But to be totally honest, these words actually describe a really
wide range of emotions because we can say:
I’m really happy that I get to finish work early tonight
or
I’m really happy I just won a trip to Italy.
The idioms that we’re going to go through in this lesson
will help you talk about that range of emotions
but also help to make your English more interesting,
more fun, more meaningful.
Thanks very much. Bye!
Oh my gosh, I just got the promotion at work.
Emma, that’s fantastic!
You must be over the moon!
Over the moon.
Over the moon is when you are really pleased about something.
You’re ecstatic.
If you just won a trip to Italy, you would be over the moon.
How was your meeting?
It was great! They gave me the time off so I’m happy as Larry.
Now this one is quite an Australian expression actually,
I think, unless anyone’s going to jump in and say
that they use it too but I really love this expression,
happy as Larry.
It’s kind of got that rhyming pattern in it.
To be honest, we don’t really know who Larry is
but we all generally agree that he’s a really happy guy
so we all want to be as happy as Larry.
You can use it anytime you’re feeling happy
not crazy, crazy happy, not ecstatic
but just right there in the middle.
There’s a public holiday coming up and I’m going away
with my friends so I’m as happy as Larry.
I had no idea that I’d enjoy my new job so much.
I’m a very happy camper.
So this one is kind of similar to ‘happy as Larry’
a happy camper indicates that you’re really content,
really satisfied rather than extremely happy
but interestingly,
‘happy camper’ is often used in the negative form as well.
So for example when the company reshuffled
the organisation, the team
were not happy campers. They were unhappy.
But it’s really important to note that this is an exception.
‘A happy camper’ can be used in the negative,
we wouldn’t use the negative form with ‘over the moon’
or ‘happy as Larry’. We wouldn’t say
I’m not as happy as Larry.
For some reason. I don’t know why.
So remember if you want to use an idiom to describe happiness
you can say: over the moon,
happy as Larry
or that you’re a happy camper.
Okay let’s talk about some idioms for sadness.
And again, sadness can move from feeling a little down
about your day to downright awful, you know
feeling like life is super hard, something dramatic has happened,
something awful has happened so there’s some
really big extremes here. We’ve got to be careful about
how we use these idioms.
And our first one is a heavy heart.
With a heavy heart, he spoke at his father’s funeral.
Have you ever had that feeling where it seems like
there’s something heavy on your chest, maybe it’s
hard to breathe or just your heart feels heavy and that’s this
feeling that comes through in this idiom.
It’s a terrible feeling to experience and definitely
on the more extreme side of sadness.
Let’s see if we can lift the mood a little.
They thought they were buying their dream house
but another couple offered more for it.
They’ve both been feeling down in the dumps all week.
They’re really sad, they’re really disappointed.
I’m a bit bummed by missing my best friend’s birthday.
So this just means that you’re low on energy, a little disappointed,
a bit sad so it’s not as bad as down in the dumps
and this one is definitely not as extreme as
a heavy heart, right? So it’s really not appropriate to say:
He’s a bit bummed because his friend died, right?
That would sound really insensitive.
And similarly, it seems a little over the top to say:
It’s with a heavy heart that I tell you,
I can’t come to your birthday.
It’s quite dramatic so just be wary of
how and when it’s appropriate to use these idioms.
Now our next emotion is fear
and again fear is felt in a range. There’s anxious and nervous
right through to utter terror.
I really hope that you haven’t felt utter terror too often in life.
Sometimes that can scare the living daylights out of you
so this idiom describes a terrifying feeling, it’s
right at the top of our scale. You know when it’s
3am in the morning and the phone rings randomly.
Something must be wrong.
You get worried, terrified.
When my brother called me at 3am,
it scared the living daylights out of me.
‘I jumped out of my skin’ is a little less severe.
Maybe you’ve just walked into a room and
a sibling or a friend is jumped out from behind a wall to scare you
right? You get such a fright.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I quite like this next idiom too, it’s used to describe
a feeling of unease or discomfort, nervousness.
That sound gives me the heebie jeebies.
Say it, it’s fun to say, heebie jeebies.
You know when all the hairs on your arms prickle and they
stand up on end, that’s the heebie jeebies.
So to talk about fear we have:
it scared the living daylights out of me.
I jumped out of my skin
and
I got the heebie jeebies.
So our next set of idioms are about the feeling of disgust,
a really strong feeling of revulsion and disapproval.
And our first disgusting idiom is
to make you want to vomit.
So this is really gross, right? It is so disgusting,
whatever this thing is is so disgusting
it makes you want to be sick, to throw up, to vomit.
The smell was so foul it made me want to vomit.
Okay that’s not really a great image so let’s move along.
Actually, this next one is not much better,
it’s just not quite as graphic.
Something can make your stomach turn.
I can’t watch those medical shows that show you close-ups of
knee and hip surgeries in the middle of an operation.
They make my stomach turn.
The thought of it sends you these feelings that your stomach
sort of is twisting and turning and upside down
and you feel a little ill.
No thank you. I don’t like that one either.
Not quite as graphic as the last one but still not a pleasant feeling.
Okay to make your skin crawl.
This one would also fit into the fear category I think
because it’s that similar,
uneasy uncomfortable feeling that you get.
I remember watching a documentary on Netflix last year
when they showed the picture of a serial killer and honestly
he looked so scary, he made my skin crawl.
If you have a phobia of insects or leeches like me,
spiders and bugs and things, they might make your skin crawl.
The thought of spiders and snakes makes your skin crawl.
All right let’s leave disgust behind
and move on to the next emotion
anger.
My neighbour had just got a new car,
he pulled up onto the street out the front of our house
and then got out to admire it and out of nowhere
someone hit the back of the car.
Oh my gosh,
he flew off the handle.
So this expression is used to describe someone who’s really angry.
If anyone is in this state, it’s best to stay out of their way right?
He flew off the handle when someone
rammed into his car.
Now keep in mind, it’s not he flew off his handle,
flew off the handle, okay?
To be ‘up in arms about something’ it also describes
feeling really angry but it’s less aggressive than
to ‘fly off the handle’. Sounds less aggressive, right?
You think about throwing your arms up in the air, we do this
when we’re frustrated, we’re annoyed about something,
we’re irritated.
So there’s a difference, right? ‘Flying off the handle’ is really angry
but we can say she was up in arms about how messy the shared
kitchen was.
And lastly
I’m at the end of my tether.
If you’ve got young kids
then this could be a really useful idiom for you.
Imagine that moment when your kids have been really naughty,
really disobedient all day. You’ve been asking them to
tidy their room, clean up all their toys all afternoon
and they’re not doing it
and you keep hearing them yelling and screaming.
It’s driving you nuts, right? And then
A ball breaks through the kitchen window.
And you yell at them.
I’m at the end of my tether with you!
meaning you’ve pushed me to my limit. I’m at the end of my ability
to be patient with you, I’ve had enough.
Cool so now you’ve got three idioms to use
if someone is driving you crazy.
Another idiom
or maybe someone is making you really angry or annoyed or
even if you’re thinking about describing a situation
where you felt that way,
use these idioms to add flavour and colour to the way
that you’re describing that situation.
Couldn’t you believe that?
I had to do a double-take there.
We’ve already been through fifteen idioms together.
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Before we get into our last emotion,
let me know what you think about this video. Are you enjoying it?
Hit that subscribe button, give it a like, all of these things help me
to know what lessons you really want to see here at mmmEnglish.
That came out of the blue.
I hope it didn’t stop you dead in your tracks.
I’ve already used all three idioms that I’m going to go through now.
I wonder if you picked up on any of them?
To do a double-take is to look again at something really quickly
like you see it and then you go back to normal
and then you suddenly think oh my gosh what was that?
It’s surprise, right? It’s caught you by surprise
and we often use it with the verb do.
I did a double-take. I couldn’t believe it
and when something comes at you from out of the blue
it’s like it came from nowhere, it was completely unexpected.
They got married just a few weeks after meeting,
it was completely out of the blue.
Now this one is almost quite literal, it’s when you suddenly
stop moving because you’re so surprised by something.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Maria.
She hadn’t seen her in over twenty years.
So all of these idioms helped to express shock or surprise
in some way. They’re really great to add to stories and to make
your English more interesting and exciting, right?
I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t believe it was her.
It came out of the blue.
Okay so we’ve been through all of those different idioms.
Now I’ve got a little challenge for you to help you put into practice
what you’ve been learning
so get your fingers ready to type. I want you to share a little
story with me down in the comments.
Take me on an emotional roller coaster.
Tell me a story, maybe one that you’ve experienced,
maybe it’s a fictional one that you make up but tell me a story
where the emotions go up, go down, go up and go down
and try to use one of the idioms from each section
of this video.
And don’t forget to download the free workbook that I’ve created
for you, it’s got all of the idioms from this lesson,
their meanings, example sentences as well as a bonus little quiz
to help you test what you learned.
I’m super excited about my next video coming out
on the mmmEnglish Channel.
I hope to see you in there. Bye for now!