Secret to Speak English like a Pro. Before I reveal the concept that will have you astonish everyone, including native English speakers, let’s play a game of “Guess” What is another way of saying ‘something is very easy’? Or an easier phrase for ‘it’s raining very heavily’?
How would you describe a situation where you’re not sure what to do? Or what if I blurt out this secret to you without wanting to, way before time? Wouldn’t I be letting the cat out of the bag? You could also say I would be spilling the
beans. How can we express these emotions and situations in a single phrase? Now that we’re almost done breaking the ice, Idioms are the answer!
So what are idioms?
Idioms are common phrases whose meanings are changed but can be understood by their popular use. This is the major Secret to Speak English like a Pro. For example, you could say ‘once in a blue moon instead of ‘rarely’ or ‘piece of cake’ for something ‘very easy.’ Break the ice is an idiom for making someone comfortable.
Idioms exist in every language. Can you think of some of the most popular idioms in your native language? They are a great way to have fun with your language. It’s raining very heavily would be ‘It’s pouring cats and dogs.Now of course, we can’t take it literally and assume cats and dogs are falling off the sky. Or when you say ‘the elephant in the room’, it means to address the big issue or the problem people are avoiding. It doesn’t mean Jumbo the elephant is going to fall off the ceiling right into your arms. But the meaning can be understood despite terms being changed due to years and years of popular usage.
A Personal story
Let me narrate an personal story to you. I went abroad to pursue my undergraduate studies in an American university. I wasn’t well versed with idioms at the time and it was a tendency for most of my American professors to use idioms in classes, as part of their daily jargon. Being unfamiliar with many phrases, a hilarious incident occurred in one of my classes. I had stayed up all night to finish my Cognitive Psychology assignment and rushed myself to class the following day, early in the morning at 7:30 am. I yawned at least 6 times within the first 10 minutes of class and I regretted not hitting the sack for at least 2-3 hours before class.
By the way, hitting the sack means going to bed or to sleep. It’s an idiom I use almost every day without fail. Moving on with the story, my professor called my name and asked me a simple question “Were you up burning the midnight oil?” I was a bit mixed up (idiom meaning confused) at the time and was quite clueless what he was talking about. He went on to explain that it meant ‘if someone was working late into the night’. I was obviously taken aback for how could burning oil be related to staying awake late all night to study? I went home and looked it up. So did you know? “Burning the midnight oil” is an idiom that dates back at least to the 1600s.”
Origin
The oldest known work to have used the phrase comes from the work ‘Emblemes’ written by the English poet Francis Quarles in 1635: We spend our mid-day sweat, our mid-night oyle; Wee tyre the night in thought; the day, in toyle. The literary work ‘Emblemes’ was the synonym to the word ‘elucubrate’, which meant to work by the side of a candle. ‘Burning the midnight oil’ was the English way of saying ‘someone was working hard through the night’ because in olden times, candles were used to provide light at night before Thomas Alva Edison came up with his genius invention of the light bulb.
Elucubrate in the 1600s meant doing something by candle light and hence, the origin of this idiom. Oil was used in many phrases to indicate the use of oil in a lamp for nocturnal study. For example, another idiom ‘to lose one’s oil’ meant to study or work in vain without results. Another phrase ‘to smell of oil’ meant to indicate hard work or laborious study. Idioms are contextual so some idioms can only be used by some groups of people or at certain times.
Let’s take the idiom ‘shape up or ship out’ for instance. It means ‘ improve your behavior or leave if you don’t’ which might be said by an employer or boss to an employee, but not to other people. So that’s it for this blog on idioms. But there is no end to learning English Idioms. According to theidioms.com, “There are estimated to be at least 25,000 idiomatic expressions in the English language.” The world is your Oyster (Take the opportunities that life has to offer), so keep learning! Stay tuned for more blogs on Idioms