Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 540

This episode explains common English idioms used to describe everyday situations, deal with challenges, and solve problems naturally. You’ll learn practical expressions that improve your spoken English, help you communicate clearly at work and in daily conversations, and boost your confidence as an intermediate or advanced English learner. 

Perfect for anyone wanting to expand their English vocabulary with useful idioms and sound more fluent and natural in both professional and casual settings.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where we try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language. So, what are we going to talk to you about in this lesson? Well, as you know, at the moment, there are real problems with inflation, and when we have inflation, we tend to have lots of problems. And so, these particular expressions that I'm going to give you now are linked generally to problems, some of them relating to inflation and some just to other types of problems. Okay, let me go through them now with you, explain, and then give an example. So, the first one is to keep the wolf from the door. Well, if you ever read your nursery rhymes, and we used to have the nursery rhyme about Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf as she walked through the forest, and then there was also the nursery rhyme of the three little pigs, and the three little pigs had three little houses, one made of straw, one made of wood, and one made of stone. And they locked their doors so that the wolf couldn't get at them. So there's a literal meaning of to keep the wolf from the door. But in our real lives, when we want to keep the wolf from the door, it means we just want to survive. So we want to keep the wolf from the door. So we have to do something, keep ourselves happy, we have to cut back a little bit, we have to make things like food and that last a little bit longer, all in an effort to keep the wolf from the door. To be left holding the baby, well, somebody has to hold the baby, somebody has to feed the baby, somebody has to wash the baby. Who is left holding the baby? But in a metaphorical sense, when somebody is left holding the baby, they have ultimate or overall or final responsibility to do something. So you could use it from a business perspective. You know, you have to present the paper. Nobody else wants to make the presentation. You have to make the presentation to the staff members leaving. You have to go to management to make a complaint on behalf of the staff. Why is it always me that's left holding the baby? Why is it always me that has to do these things and take the responsibility? So yeah, you're left holding the baby. You're the one who has to take final responsibility. I remember when I was younger and we finished school and my sister had left home and she'd gone to live in another country. My brother left home and went to live in another country and I was left holding the baby, which was looking after mum and dad. And I said, why am I left holding the baby? Why am I the one responsible for looking after them? Of course I didn't mind, but that's a good example of to be left holding the baby. Number three, to live from hand to mouth, to live from hand to mouth. Well, what it means is to live from hand to mouth is that you don't have a lot of money to spare. You don't have a lot of money to waste on unnecessary pleasures or items of food. And you live from hand to mouth means whatever you can find, you pick it up and you eat it. Whatever you can afford, you buy it. But you have no time or no money or no free money for any little extras. Oh, this hyperinflation is really, really difficult. Every time I go to the supermarket, the prices have gone up another two or three percent. Really, really, it's impossible to make ends meet. It's impossible to make your budget stretch that far. We really live from hand to mouth, so month to month. When we get the salary at the end of the month, it's already identified for how we're going to spend it. So we don't have time for those little luxuries. We don't have money for those extra little luxuries. So we live from hand to mouth. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. To keep your head above water, well, another economically related expression, to keep your head above water. If you've been trying to swim, you'll know exactly what this means. Literally, when you jump in the water and if you're not able to swim, then your head goes under the surface and you and you struggle to keep your head above water to get some air. Okay, so that's the literal meaning. But in a sense, when you have financial problems and at the end of the month, the two days before you get paid, you struggle to pay bills or you're looking for some money to buy some food, you have difficulty keeping your head above water. But you just about manage. But if some big bill comes in that you weren't expecting or there's a medical bill that you have to pay, well then, yeah, that can certainly have a big negative impact on your budget and your expenses. And you might have difficulty in that month keeping your head above water. So when we keep our head above water, we survive. When we don't keep our head above water, we go under. And we might struggle for a few days at the end of the month or a week at the end of the month and then get back to normal for the next three weeks. So to keep your head above water is to keep fighting, to keep struggling, to get that breath and not to go under. To take something in your stride. To take something in your stride. Well, stride is a walk. A stride is quite a long walk, a long step, and usually it's one full of confidence. He strode out onto the stage. He strode along the street as if he had not a care in the world. Okay, so when you take something in your stride, you're able to deal with problems. It doesn't stop you. So you're walking without stopping. So when you take something in your stride, it doesn't cause any difficulties for you. You're able to deal with it. So, for example, if you're from a family situation and everything is going well, the children are okay at school, you've got your job, your wife's got your job, the mortgage has been paid, everything seems okay. But then something happens. Perhaps your partner gets ill and they're not able to earn money for a few months, but you manage, you deal with it. There's no problem. You take it in your stride. Other people might panic, other people might have problems, other people might moan and groan, but you are able to take it in your stride, meaning you're able to deal with that particular problem at that time and it doesn't cause you any great difficulty. To bite off more than you can chew. So this is quite negative, okay? So when you bite off more than you can chew, you're not able to swallow it. So from a metaphorical point of view, when somebody says that you have bitten off more than you can chew, perhaps you have taken on more responsibility than you're able to deal with. Let's say in work, the boss asks you, can you deal with this project? And you're dealing with that. And then he comes along and asks you, well, there's another project that needs to be dealt with. And you put your hand up and you take responsibility for that. But after about three or four days, you realize and your colleagues realize that you're actually not able to deal with both of them at the same time. And somebody might say, well, look, I think you've bitten off more than you can chew. Why don't you tell the boss you'll have to delay this until you finish the first project? It would make much more sense. Or indeed, ask if there's somebody who can help you. So when you bite off more than you can chew, you take on a little bit more responsibility, either knowingly or unknowingly, but you're not able to complete it or you're not able to give it the full attention because you've got more or too much on your plate. So to bite off more than you can chew. To keep body and soul together. We use this expression when we really struggle. So we use it in quite a negative way. I have great difficulty these days keeping body and soul together. It literally means I don't have enough money to pay for all of the bills. I don't have enough money to pay for the food. I don't have enough money to buy the extras that the kids want. I don't have enough money to buy them those extra little presents that I would really like to give them or to go on that holiday. We don't have that luxury at the moment within our budget. So I'm struggling to keep body and soul together, literally to afford the basics, pay the rent, pay the mortgage, pay the food bills, pay for the education, whatever it might be. Yeah, we can do that, but we can't do the others. So we are just about keeping body and soul together. We are struggling to keep body and soul together. I don't know how I'm going to keep body and soul together in the coming months, particularly in the winter. To keep or to hold your end up. Okay, well, your end can be the beginning or the literally the end of something. So when you're carrying a box and it's very heavy, you might ask somebody to help you. So when we say to hold or to keep your end up, it means to support whoever else is involved in something. So if you're working on a project as a team, it requires the whole team to participate. Everybody has to do their best. Everybody has to have their input. Everybody has to bring their piece of expertise to that particular project. If somebody isn't pulling their weight, meaning making a good enough contribution, then the project probably won't be successful, or at least it won't finish at the particular time and deadline. So if everybody keeps their end up, if everybody holds up their end, then it will be successful or it has a better chance of being successful. So the boss might tell you at the beginning of the project, guys, this is what we have to do. We've got two months to complete it. It's really important. It could mean the future of the business. What I'm asking is that all of you hold up or keep up your ends, meaning contribute what you can, what you have to. And if we all pull together as a team, then we're bound to be successful. And you could use the same in relation to a sports team, a basketball team, a football team, a rugby team. If everybody keeps their end up, everybody does what they have to do, then the team will be successful. If somebody is not fit, if somebody doesn't mark the player in the right way, if they don't hold up their end or keep their end up, then we're going to have a difficulty. To ride out the storm. To ride out the storm. Literally, what it means is to drive or to ride the horse as quickly as possible when you see a storm coming behind you. You want to get home before it starts raining very, very heavily. You want to beat the storm. But if a storm actually hits you before you get home, then you've got to find a place to shelter. So to ride out the storm means to deal with difficult situations in the hope that it won't last so long and that when it's over, you'll be better or better placed to be successful. From a business perspective, if a company is having difficulty selling its products because perhaps they are luxury products and when there's high inflation, people tend not to buy luxury products. But you've had a really successful four or five years and luckily for the business, you've got a lot of cash in the bank and that will help you to ride out the storm of a couple of years of high inflation when nobody is really interested in luxury products or they can't afford them because they have to pay money for higher rent and petrol. So cash in the bank will enable you to ride out the storm. If you've got enough credit with your boss and you've done really well on other projects and perhaps he is letting people go or there's not enough work for others, you hope that he doesn't tell you that you have to leave because there's enough credit in the bank that you can ride out that particular storm and he really needs you because you're working in the sales or the marketing area so you can ride out the storm. So to ride out the storm really means to survive, have enough wherewithal, whether it's cash, whether it's money or whether it's education to enable you to ride out whatever that storm happens to be. And then finally to sink or swim. Well these are quite literal meanings. If you sink, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, you go under the water. If you swim, you survive. And often at times of difficulty, it really will be a question of sink or swim. We've got to really, really push these new products. We've got to really, really push all our sales outlets to try and maximize the revenues because this is really a period when it could be sink or swim. If we don't sell them, we go down, we go under. If we sell them, we keep afloat, we swim, we survive. And it's a simple fact. Yeah, sink or swim. Often football managers are under huge pressure because the team has to perform. And not every team can win every game. Not every team, obviously, is capable of winning the competition. There can only be one winner. But those managers are under pressure. And when it gets to the, as they call it, the business end of the football season, it can be sink or swim for a lot of them. The last couple of games, we win them, he survives, they lose, guess what? He gets the elbow or he's sacked and he has to find another club. So it is really sink or swim time. Okay, so as I said, those are expressions really connected with lots of little difficulties. Some of them we can associate with the present difficulties of inflation, possible recession, but they can relate to other particular problems. Try and practice them, understand them. And if you need more help, come back to me, send me a note, and I'm very happy to give you some other examples. And as I said, hopefully you're not suffering in any way. If you are, talk to somebody because sharing a problem is a good way of halving a problem. A problem shared is a problem halved. Remember that. Okay, and if I can help you, please let me know. As always, I really appreciate you watching. I really appreciate you listening. And as always, join me again soon.