Learning English idioms

Idioms will help improve your understanding of the English language

While opening a text book and studying for multiple hours a day will certainly help you learn English, sometimes it’s a good idea to immerse yourself fully into British culture and talk with the locals. By doing this, you’ll likely to come across expressions that leave you scratching your head, but this is where the fun is, as mastering the use of idioms will help you enjoy fluent conversations with locals – and understand more difficult speech/text in return.

Idioms give a deeper insight into British culture

If you’re planning to live, work or study in an English speaking society, avoiding idioms will not do you any good at all as you’ll miss out on inside jokes and perhaps fail to grasp the concept of a conversation altogether. Idioms themselves give a deeper insight into British culture and actually make language a lot more interesting, so here are some English idiomatic meanings.

• Barking up the wrong tree = looking in the wrong place/accusing the wrong person
• The ball is in your court = it’s up to you to take the next step/make the right move
• Add insult to injury = to further a loss with indignity or mockery/ to make an unfavourable situation a lot worse than it already is
• Beat around the bush = talking around a certain subject or issue rather than getting to the main point
• Best thing since sliced bread = a good invention, innovation, idea or plan

To analyse idioms further, let’s take a closer look at the last example, “best thing since sliced bread,” which means a good invention, innovation, idea or plan. It sounds obvious, but this idiom literally came about when sliced bread started to hit the shelves back in 1928. People were so amazed by the idea that they regularly used the idiom to express their enthusiasm for something.

Knowing this fact helps those learning English appreciate how language develops and explains why there are many obscure sayings within the language itself