10 English Idioms with Meanings You CAN’T Guess

Learn ten idioms that will help you sound more natural and confident in conversations. From flattering your boss as you “butter her up” to describing disorganized chaos as “running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” these phrases will help you express yourself better in everyday situations. You’ll also learn how to address obvious problems with “the elephant in the room” and why there’s no point in “beating a dead horse” when something has already been discussed. By the end of this class, you’ll have the knowledge you need to start using these expressions in your conversations. https://www.engvid.com/10-english-idi... I also have a writing channel! Subscribe here: ‪@WritetotheTop‬ More lessons like this: 10 more strange English expressions:    • 10 English Expressions with meanings you c...   Learn about the origins of more English words and expressions:    • The Roots of Everyday English Expressions:...   In this lesson: 0:00 10 strange expressions 0:37 to butter someone up 1:17 to run around like a chicken with its head cut off 2:41 the elephant in the room 3:38 beating a dead horse 4:36 neck of the woods 5:13 everything but the kitchen sink 6:02 the best thing since sliced bread 7:26 wet behind the ears 8:06 to rub someone the wrong way 8:50 to have a bone to pick with someone Transcript: Hi, everybody. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, I want to teach you a few expressions, and some of them are actually idioms that people commonly use in everyday situations. And. as with most idioms and cultural expressions, if you... if nobody explains to you what they mean, they're very difficult to guess at. So, I'm going to tell you what these ten expressions mean and in what context you can probably use them. Most of these you will not use in writing; they're pretty informal, but they're good to know for everyday situations. So, we're going to start with: "to butter someone up". "Butter" being a verb. Actually, I should mention that here. "To butter someone up". If you're "buttering someone up", you're flattering them very much; usually, because you want something from them. So, you would "butter up your boss", you would "butter up your teacher", you would "butter up a co-worker"; and then, later, you will ask for some sort of favor. So, if you think about a piece of bread, and you put butter, you know, it's nice, and smooth, and soft. You're making them feel comfortable, and tasty, and whatnot. So, to flatter someone - to make them feel good about themselves. Next: "to run around like a chicken with its head cut off". It's a bit of a long expression. People still use this very commonly. It's a little bit old, but everybody still knows what it means and it's very effective for the situation. So, if you think about a chicken, if you take a chicken and cut its head off, it will continue to run around on the ground, even though there's no head. But the problem without having the head is that it doesn't know where it's going. So, it's just going, you know, back and forth, and all over the place. So, we... when we say this about a person, it's a person who's a little bit nervous, and just running around being very busy, but without any sort of organization or any control. So, if somebody... let's say I'm having a party... my wife and I are having a party, and we're getting near the time where people are supposed to arrive, but not everything's finished. And she's running around here and there, and trying to do a little bit of everything. But it's so disorganized that nothing's going... nothing's happening. So, I tell her: "Just calm down; you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off." Calm down. Focus. Do one thing at a time. As... as you finish, go to the next thing; it will be much more effective. "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off" gets you nowhere, right? Just makes other people nervous, actually. "The elephant in the room" or "There's an elephant in the room". This is an interesting expression. If you think about a room, like, in your house - if you put an elephant in there, that elephant will be pretty obvious, I think; a little bit difficult to hide. So, that's what we mean when we say this. When we... when there's a topic, or a question, or a problem that is very obvious to everybody in the room - everybody in the area - but nobody really wants to talk about it, we say: "the elephant in the room". So, somebody eventually will say: "I think we need to discuss the elephant in the room." And everybody will understand exactly what that... the topic of that discussion needs to be. So, it's something that's very obvious, but everybody wants to avoid speaking about it. It's usually something obviously not very pleasant; that's why nobody wants to speak about it. But they also can't hide from it; it's very obvious to everybody. "No point beating a dead horse". Basically, there is no point in repeating something. […]