If you know these 14 IDIOMS your English is SUPER ADVANCED! | English Vocabulary Help

Are you ready to learn some real life advanced English phrases?

Not just the boring phrases that you'll get out of a textbook.

Those phrases aren't really going to help you, especially if you're advanced English speaker and you're speaking with native English speakers like myself.

These are the real phrases that I actually hear when I'm speaking with my friends, my family, when I'm listening to podcasts, when I'm listening to movies, when I'm watching a television show.

I write them down and I make sure to teach them to you so that you can understand them and use them in your everyday English.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to use all of these phrases very confidently.

If you want more about the phrases in this lesson, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com.

Now let's get started with the lesson.

This first phrase, it adds excitement to your everyday English.

You'll hear this phrase in television shows and in movies, because it's kind of dramatic.

It adds excitement again.

But you could actually use it in your everyday life as well.

The phrase is, it's go time.

This phrase means it's time to start something.

But we use this when it's something serious or something we've been planning for for a long time.

For instance, maybe if you are in a theater production, you know you're about to put on a play or a musical and it's time to begin.

You say it's go time.

This means get excited, it's time to go.

Or if you are preparing for a presentation, you say, okay, it's go time in five minutes.

Just is a fun way to say it's time to begin.

This next phrase.

I didn't use to use it so much, but I've been hearing it a lot on podcasts and on television.

And my husband said he uses it a lot at work as well.

The phrase is to read the tea leaves.

So when you say read the tea leaves, it means...

You need to try to predict what's going to happen based on small amounts of evidence or just small little signs that you see.

So you'll hear this phrase, especially in finance, when people are saying you know you should think about investing in this stock or this company.

It's because of some small signs that's going to be successful.

So they're telling you, you know, kind of read between the lines.

It's not super obvious if you're saying read the tea leaves, but it just means that you know.

You need to try to predict the future based on the small amount of evidence that you have.

I didn't know you read tea leaves.

Oh yeah, I've done it for years.

Phrase to read the tea leaves.

Think of it kind of as predict the future.

But it's more of a metaphor and it's a really great idiom to use if you want to just sound natural and have something you know more creative to say than just try to predict the future or predict what's going to happen.

You know, reading tea leaves is not... This next English vocabulary word, it's so useful.

I definitely think you should add it to your vocabulary in your everyday English.

So if you say that a reaction was lukewarm, it means it's neither bad, but it's not good either.

They're not very excited.

For example, in my own life...

I'm at home and with my kids all the time and I'm always in charge of making dinner.

This is such a tough task honestly, especially with young picky children, children that don't want to eat just anything.

They like kind of the same things over and over again.

So sometimes if I make something new, the reaction is kind of lukewarm.

They're definitely not excited about it, but they'll, you know, thanks mom, okay.

But if I make pizza or we order pizza, the reaction is definitely not lukewarm.

They're very excited.

They're very happy.

So lukewarm is neither happy, neither disappointed.

Just okay.

It's lukewarm at best.

A lot of times in the workplace.

If you describe your client or your boss as having a lukewarm reaction, it's probably not positive.

It's.

You know you're expecting them to be happy about something or to accept it, but they weren't very happy.

So it it's kind of in the middle, but it leans more towards a negative reaction.

If you say someone was lukewarm.

Speaking of the workplace and making deals, the next phrase is super useful.

The phrase is to lock up a deal or you can lock up other things as well.

So if you are in sales or you're just working in a workplace that makes deals, you can say that we locked up the deal.

That means everything's finalized or maybe it's just about to be finalized.

It's pretty secure.

Now, if you say we haven't quite locked up the deal yet, that means whoever you're trying to negotiate with has not said yes for sure yet.

You're kind of waiting.

The way I use this phrase is oftentimes I sell my own things on Facebook marketplace, because why not?

If it's just sitting in my house and I'm not using it, I might as well make some money.

So I will negotiate with people, you know, they'll try to ask for a lower price and I'll say no, like I'm about this much i usually try to give them a good deal because it's just my old stuff and finally when we agree i say okay i locked up the deal come and pick it up or whatever it is so it just means you know everything's kind of finalized everyone agrees if you lock up a deal you can also say we locked up the price that means the price is final we're not adjusting it anymore downstairs locked up done deal this next idiom i think it's pretty universal i think a lot of languages use this, but the phrase is a bird in the hand.

So it comes from the proverb, common saying that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

This just means that something that you have is guaranteed, rather than trying to go out and get more.

Oftentimes, you'll hear English speakers not use this full phrase.

You'll hear them just say, well, a bird in the hand.

And this just implies that something that is guaranteed that you have is better than something that you have to gamble and risk for if you're trying to get more or be kind of greedy.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

The next phrase is such a good one.

If you say to someone, that's a good problem to have.

It means that even though they have a problem, it indicates that they're actually successful.

So you're kind of saying like, don't worry, even though this is a problem, it's a good one.

And this implies like, for instance, if your friend is running a business and they're selling something let's say they're selling t-shirts and they're selling a ton of t-shirts

And finally they start to run out of t-shirts and they say, we are running out of t-shirts.

Like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

You could say, well, That's a good problem to have.

That means you're making a lot of money and you can solve that problem.

It's a good one to have.

Still, it's a good problem to have, right?

You might know someone that is very smart.

They're very qualified.

And when they're looking for jobs, they get multiple job offers and they just say oh, I'm so stressed out.

I can't decide which job I want to take.

You could say to them, well, that's a really good problem to have.

It's kind of sarcastic too, because you're saying like it's not really a problem, because it's a really good thing.

It indicates that you're being successful.

If you are in an intense situation, you might hear this next phrase.

If you are trying to weed things or people out, it means you're trying to get rid of things that aren't effective, they're not correct or people that are not cut out.

For whatever you're trying to get done,

Let me give you some examples and you'll understand this phrase very easily.

So in college, a lot of people go into college and say I want to be a doctor, like a medical doctor.

And in the United States this is very competitive to get into medical school and go on to be a doctor.

You pay a lot of money.

So there are a lot of people that say they want to be a doctor but they're not actually going to be cut out to take all the classes required.

They're very difficult.

They require a lot of memorization and learning.

So the first class you take in college that would kind of qualify you to then end up being a doctor is biology.

It's pretty difficult.

And if you don't get an A in it, you're probably not going to go to medical school.

So it kind of weeds people out that are not qualified to be doctors eventually.

So we say that they're weeding out people with this class, because if you don't get an A, you're not going to be going to medical school.

You're not going to be an effective doctor or student.

To weed out those she felt were undesirable.

A lot of businesses.

After the pandemic they asked people to come back to the office or they said you cannot work for us anymore because honestly, they were trying to weed people out.

They needed to make some cuts in their amount of employees, maybe they were cutting costs.

And by saying you have to come to the office rather than work from home, it started to weed people out.

It got the people who are not effective at the job out of the job, or people who just didn't desire to work at the company.

They didn't desire it enough to actually do the work and go to the office.

So this is an interesting phrase to weed things or people out.

So when you use this phrase to weed things out, you can imagine that you're actually gardening and you're trying to get the things that are unnecessary out of your garden the weeds.

You don't want those in there because they will eventually, you know, hurt your garden.

Your garden will not be as productive.

So this phrase, it's like a metaphor and it's used very, very commonly in everyday English.

I hope that maybe you've heard of this next phrase because it is so common to use, but it's kind of a funky English word.

The word is divvy.

So to divvy something up.

This is a really informal way to say we're going to split up something or we're going to share responsibility or cost of something.

So for instance, maybe you guys have a big project at work.

And instead of just one person doing most of the work, you say, let's divvy it up to everybody.

Let's let's divvy up the cost of dinner.

This means everybody's gonna divide the bill.

Divvy, divide, you might be getting it now.

This is a fun word to say and it's a really common English phrase, to divvy something up.

You can just start divvying up the jewelry.

In English, oftentimes we use our plate to mean the amount of responsibilities or jobs we have going on.

There are a lot of different phrases that go along with this imaginary plate.

So you can say, I need to get something off my plate.

This means I need to give a responsibility to someone else.

Or you can say, let me take something off your plate.

This means let me take a responsibility or a job from you because you're very busy.

This would be very polite to offer.

I'm going to take something off your plate.

Or, if you want to just comment on the amount of responsibilities and jobs that someone has.

Maybe they're going to school, maybe they have kids, maybe they are working two jobs or they're just very, very busy.

You could say you have a lot on your plate right now.

This means you have a lot of responsibility and you're just very busy in general.

I just need to get some things off my plate.

Oftentimes when I have tasks or jobs that I have to do and I finally get them done it, It feels nice to get something off my plate.

This just means it's nice to check something off my to-do list or a task that was, you know kind of work intensive for myself.

This next phrase is one that I commonly use for advice to myself, to my friends, to my family and even to you, my student.

So the phrase is, how do you eat an elephant?

Have you heard this?

Have you heard this African proverb?

Again, it's just a common saying.

It's pretty universal.

I love to say this to people when they feel overwhelmed or I say it to myself all the time.

Just because you have something that seems impossible or it seems like it's going to take a long time to do.

Let's say your dream is to write a book and you say, I'll just never have time to write a book.

I'll never be able to do it.

I might say to you, well, how do you eat an elephant?

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Sometimes we just say the beginning of this phrase, how do you eat an elephant?

Because it's implied that the person might already know the answer.

So how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?

How do you write a book one page at a time or one day at a time?

You don't have to write it all at the same time.

You should break it up into smaller tasks.

And this is definitely a good advice to someone just saying like, don't give up.

Even if you're just accomplishing little by little, you don't have to do all at one time.

Do you have a rainy day fund?

A rainy day fund is what we call money that somebody saves for unexpected problems.

So instead of just saving like... an emergency fund, they call it their rainy day fund.

It's really the same thing.

It just means that every time you get paid or make money, you set aside a little bit, not for a vacation, not for anything fun, just in case you have a car problem or something breaks in your house or a medical expense.

We call that a rainy day fund for something that happens, that's unexpected, that's bad or a problem.

Gotcha, but how's our emergency rainy day fund?

So when we think of this phrase a rainy day fund think about bad weather, meaning bad problems that you need to spend money on.

And hopefully you do have an emergency fund, or rainy day fund as we like to call it, because it's so important.

You never know what's going to happen when you'll need to have money.

This next phrase is definitely very important in English.

The phrase is calling something a slippery slope.

We use this idiom to talk about something small that could end up having really big consequences down the road.

So let's go over a few examples.

It's really important to understand this idiom.

If you're a parent, you know that giving your kid something fun like, let's say, candy like I gave my kid a piece of candy one time.

It kind of gets to be a slippery slope, because then every day they think they can have candy before dinner and really it's supposed to be a treat.

It's supposed to be maybe even a dessert.

So it's a slippery slope to do it one time, because it can lead to more times and just not eating as healthy.

I bet you it's a slippery slope.

Another example that's very common here in the United States is ice using your credit card to pay for something that you can't afford because it's a slippery slope.

Eventually, you'll accumulate a lot of debt if you start feeling comfortable.

Oh, I'll pay for it later.

I'll worry about it later.

You need to stay on budget.

Otherwise, it's a slippery slope.

You'll end up with a lot of debt on your credit card.

For some people when they want to have a good habit like going to the gym.

If they skip one day, they say ah, it's fine.

I go to the gym all the time.

I'll skip today.

It kind of gets to be a slippery slope because they feel like the same the next day.

And then eventually they're like, well, I keep skipping.

So what's the point?

It's a slippery slope that having a bad habit can lead to it, you know, being permanent.

So we use this phrase mainly to warn someone of something that seems kind of small and insignificant being important and having bad consequences in the future.

It's a warning phrase, a slippery slope.

Finally, when we talk about setting goals, boundaries either personal professional, or boundaries with our kids, whatever it might be, we use this phrase to draw the line.

So if you are at your workplace and your boss asks you to do a lot of work over the weekend, you could say sorry, I have to draw the line.

I can't work on the weekends.

It's really important for me to spend time with my family.

I ain't drawing no line.

Maybe someone's charging you a lot of money for something.

And finally you say I'm sorry, I have to draw the line.

I can't spend any more money on this.

A lot of times this just means like this is my permanent boundary.

I'm not going to cross this line.

Congratulations you have learned 14 new English phrases that I promise you you'll start noticing in your everyday conversations right away.

If you want to dive a little further into this English lesson with some PDFs, some quizzes, some extra work, and you want access to all my lessons ad-free, make sure to sign up for my monthly membership at englishwithkaylacom.

You'll also have access to my community of English speakers there and access to ask myself more about every lesson.

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn with me.

I know that you want to learn more and if you're in the mood, make sure to check out the next lesson lesson.

I'll see you guys.

Goodbye.

[Mastering Advanced Everyday English Phrases]-[If you know these 14 IDIOMS your English is SUPER ADVANCED!]

📋 Summary

Enhancing Your Fluency: A Guide to Advanced English Idioms

Workplace and Professional Idioms

Describing Situations and Predictions

Managing Challenges and Expectations

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript