6 more strange English phrases explained

Man and a woman stood together smiling

In a previous blog, we shared someĚýstrange English phrases that might have left you with some questions. The English language is full of peculiar phrases that can even confuse fluent speakers. In today's post, we'll take a look at a few more such phrases to help you expand your repertoire.

Strange English phrases explained
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Cat got your tongue?

This phrase is used when someone has nothing to say. Attempts to get to the bottom of this phrase have left many speechless (sorry, we couldn’t resist). One tale states that, in the times of witch-hunting, a witch – or her cat – would steal a person’s tongue to prevent them from telling others about the witch.ĚýHowever, this is only a tale and there are many other guesses where this phrase came from. Others have suggested that ancient kings would punish those who displeased them by cutting out their tongues and feeding them to their pet cats.

Use it: “You’re very quiet – cat got your tongue?”

Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face

It is used to warn someone against a needless action (often motivated by anger or greed) that will be self-destructive. For example, if someone plots revenge but the act ultimately results in more harm to the individual than to the focus of their anger. Legend has it that this phrase originates from when pious women would disfigure themselves in order to protect their chastity. The most famous of these was Saint Ebba, the Mother Superior of the monastery of Coldingham. In 867 Viking pirates landed in Scotland, and when this news reached Ebba, she urged her nuns to cut off their noses and upper lips so they would be unappealing to the Vikings.Ěý

Use it: “I’m angry that my colleague was promoted before me, so I might just quit.” – “But you like your job and you need the money. If you react like that you’re just cutting your nose off to spite your face.”

Barking up the wrong tree

This is used when someone is pursuing a mistaken or misguided line of thought or course of action. Very simply, it alludes to the mistake made by dogs when they believe they have chased their prey up a tree, but it has actually escaped by leaping from one tree to another.

Use it: “If you think I want to get up at 5am tomorrow to go fishing with you, you’re barking up the wrong tree!”

The early bird catches the worm

This describes how a person who takes the earliest opportunity to do something will gain an advantage over others. This is first recorded in John Ray’s 1670, 1678: “The early bird catcheth the worm.”

Clearly, the title of the work indicates that this was considered proverbial even in the 17th century, and it recognizes that the first bird to spot a worm will likely grab it first.

Use it: “The sale starts tomorrow and the store opens at 8am. Arrive early to get the pick of the best stuff – the early bird catches the worm.”

Close, but no cigar

The phrase is often used to describe a good attempt at something that is almost – but not – successful. It is said that this saying is of American origin – along with its variant “nice try, but no cigar” – where fairground stalls used to give out cigars as prizes. It appeared in The Lima News in November 1949 in a report about how the Lima House Cigar and Sporting Goods Store narrowly avoided being burnt down in a fire. The title of the article was: “Close But No Cigar.”

Use it: “Actually, my name is June, not Jane – close, but no cigar.”

To add insult to injury

This means to make a bad situation worse. The origin of this phrase is debatable, but one theory is that it derives from the fables of from the first century AD. The that has landed on his head and bitten him. Instead, he hits himself on the head and the fly says: “You wished to avenge an insect’s sting with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?”

Use it: “I went for a job interview, but they told me I was too old for the job. To add insult to injury, my car broke down on the way home – what a bad day!”

These are just a few commonly used English phrases, so next time you hear them, you'll know exactly what they mean and their origin. You also might be able to potentially impress your friends with this knowledge.Ěý

Curious about more phrases and slang? Make sure to check outĚý9 slang terms from across the UK.

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  • A young woman sat on a laptop outside, smiling and pointing to her laptop

    Three ways to learn new English words

    By Vaughan Jones

    It’s more important for teachers to help students find ways to practice their English outside the classroom. The more efficient students become at autonomous learning, the better they’ll be able to overcome interruptions and make up for lost time.

    It will be even more challenging if you're a self-learner as you do not have a teacher looking over you and steering your learning. But it’s helpful to learn from the teaching world and pick up teacher tips that you can apply to your own studies and techniques.

    Why are learning new words so challenging?

    Students learning new words in English generally progress steadily up until the pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. But after that, they start to struggle.

    This is because there’s a big difference between the volume of the vocabulary that intermediate students and upper-intermediate students need to know.

    • Intermediate (B1/B2 level) students need to know about 2,500 words
    • upper-intermediate (B2/C1 level) students need to know about 7,500-9,000 words.

    That’s a big jump in numbers. But the real challenge is that those 5,000+ new words are not very frequent. Consequently, students don’t encounter them very often, making it difficult to recall them and leap from one level to the next.

    While there’s no simple answer to this problem, there are ways to help students overcome it. The following framework can be a big help in any classroom:

    1. Focus on the most important words:ĚýAlways teach appropriate words for the levels your students are currently at.
    2. Provide memorable first encounters:ĚýYou never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, ensure your student's first encounter with a new word is as memorable as possible.
    3. Teach effective word-learning strategies:ĚýProvide your students with valuable tools, tactics and resources so that they can learn new words outside the classroom, too.
    4. Organize repeat encounters:ĚýVocabulary works on a “use it or lose it” basis, so ensure your students encounter the vocabulary you want them to learn repeatedly.

    How to teach effective word-learning strategies

    There are three steps to teach students how to learn new words effectively:

    1. Help learners maximize their exposure to English and find opportunities to use English outside the classroom

    Thanks to the internet and technology, there are many ways that students can engage with the English language outside the classroom.

    However, simple exposure to a new language is not enough – it takes much longer and is less effective than active learning. When students do something with the language they’re exposed to; it is far more memorable.

    That’s why it’s crucial for teachers to help their students seek out English in their own time and use the language, turning passive exposure into active learning.

    • Encourage students to read, listen and view things that they’re interested in or passionate about in English. For example, introduce them to new blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, or TV series that fit their interests – since personalization leads to more effective learning.
    • Help students find ways to use English in different ways. For example, they can start a learning diary, make to-do lists in English, write social media posts, and create word cards to practice their writing. For speaking, they can record voice memos or video stories, take part in Zoom discussions, or participate in speaking projects and live classes.

    2. Provide ways for students to discover the meaning of new words

    It’s crucial to help students improve their guesswork. Instead of asking online translators to translate every time they encounter a new word, they should be able to guess the meaning of new vocabulary differently.

    • One approach is to look at the morphology of words and consider word families. For example, you can ask your students to brainstorm words with a common root. Or, you can have them identify and practice common suffixes.
    • Explore “true friends” or words that are similar in English and your student's native language.
    • Help your students figure out how to guess the meaning of a word from the context. To do this, you must ensure that your students don’t just hear or read new words but also put them into use.

    One way to get students to learn and retain vocabulary is to get them to create word cards:

    • Ask students to collect ten new words that they’re exposed to throughout the week and bring them to class, like a “show and tell” for words.
    • Then have a debate about how useful each of those words is.

    This helps to connect learning inside and outside the classroom, and it’s fun!

    3. Provide students with strategies to consolidate their knowledge of new words

    Finally, teachers should give students ideas on how to memorize words outside the classroom. You can have your students produce word cards and use a Word Store booklet to practice tasks like matching words with images or definitions.

    Lastly, it’s important to teach students memory tricks or mnemonics so they can retain the new words they encounter.

  • Woman wearing headphones outside, smiling and looking hopeful

    6 easy ways to learn English

    By

    When you’re learning English, it’s important to keep your motivation up. As with any task, there may be times when it feels a bit more difficult, so switch up your methods and don’t be afraid to make mistakes – you’ll reach the level you want to be at.

    We’ve already provided some unique ways to teach English that you may now have experienced with your teacher. Here, we suggest some easy ways to learn English that you can try any time – at home, at work or on the move. Why not try them today? Surround yourself with English and you’ll see improvements in your language confidence and skills, while having fun at the same time…

    1. English words with friends

    Scrabble is a classic board game in which players use random lettered tiles to create words in a crossword fashion. It’s a fantastic way to strengthen your English vocabulary, and there’s also a Scrabble Junior version for beginners. Playing Scrabble challenges you to really think in English as you try to come up with different words using your set of letters.

    If you’re taking an English class, buy the board game and invite your classmates to play with you. You can also play Scrabble online through websites like Facebook, where it is called Words With Friends.

    2. Add some music

    Not only will your favorite song wake up your mind and put you in a positive mood to learn English, but the lyrics can help you expand your skills. acquire grammar and vocabulary and improve spelling.

    Songs almost always contain a lot of useful vocabulary, phrases and expressions. And since the intended audience is fluent English speakers, the latest tunes include up-to-date language and colloquialisms. The language used in songs is casual and usable, if you pick the right music. Music also has an uncanny ability to stick in our heads, which can help you remember your new English words.

  • A suitcase with flag stickers on sat on a map of the world

    How do English phrases travel across countries?

    By David Crystal

    All living languages change. It’s a fact of life that some people find uncomfortable, but that no one can prevent. The only languages that don’t change are dead ones.

    How does change happen? The chief way is through mutual influence, when languages – which means people – come into contact with each other. An immediate effect is that words and phrases begin to be exchanged.

    Origins of English

    The history of English shows this taking place from the very beginning. When the Germanic tribes first arrived in Britain, bringing with them the dialects that would become English, their vocabulary already contained words and phrases borrowed from Latin, a consequence of the interaction with the soldiers of the Roman Empire.

    Today we think of such words as 'butter', 'cup', 'kitchen', 'mile', and 'street' as true English words, but they are all Latin in origin ('butyrum', 'cuppa', 'coquina', 'mille', 'strata'), taken into Germanic while the tribes were still on the European mainland.

    The process continued over the centuries. An everyday word like 'take' reminds us of the Viking invasions, for this came from Old Norse 'tacan'. So did 'knife' (from 'knifr'). Even basic grammatical items were affected: 'they', 'them', and 'their' are all from Old Norse.

    When the French arrived, in the eleventh century, the borrowing became a flood, with thousands of French words expanding the vocabulary to an unprecedented size, in such domains as law, religion, politics, food, and the arts – 'duke', 'abbot', 'war', 'peace', 'pork' and 'beauty'. During the Renaissance, Latin added tens of thousands more.

    In all cases, the words traveled because cultural contact – in its broadest sense – made them do so.

    The history of contact

    This history of contact is one of the reasons that English has so many near-synonyms: we can 'ask' (from Old English), 'question' (from French), and 'interrogate' (from Latin). We can talk about a 'fire', 'flame', and 'conflagration'; 'kingly', 'royal', and 'regal'. But although French and Latin are the dominant voices, they are put in the shade by the accumulated impact of the many languages that English has since encountered as its speakers moved around the globe, especially in the days of the British Empire.

    Today, a search through the files of any major dictionary shows the presence of hundreds of languages, from 'aardvark' (Afrikaans) to 'zygote' (Greek).

    It’s been estimated that around 80 percent of present-day English vocabulary comes from languages other than the original Anglo-Saxon Germanic. English seems to always be a vacuum cleaner of a language, sucking in words from whichever culture it was in contact with. The process continues. In recent years, dictionary writers have been considering such new borrowings of words from other languages.

    But not everything in language change is due to borrowing. When we look at recent lists of updates in the dictionary world, we find hundreds of phrasal expressions, such as 'solar farm', 'travel card', 'skill set', 'cold caller', 'air punch', and 'set menu'.

    Blends of existing words form an increasingly large component of modern vocabulary, such as 'glamping' (glamorous + camping) and 'Pokemon' (pocket + monster), as do internet abbreviations, such as 'GTG' (got to go) and 'BRB' (be right back).

    And it’s here that we see the most noticeable phenomenon of the last few decades: the impact of English on other languages. The traveling is now going in both directions.

    Over a decade ago, Manfred Görlach published his Dictionary of European Anglicisms, showing English to be "the world’s biggest lexical exporter”. The book lists hundreds of words and phrases that have entered the languages of Europe. A small selection from letter 'A' shows 'ace' (from tennis), 'aerobics', 'aftershave', and 'aqualung', as well as phrases such as 'acid house' and 'air bag'.

    The factors are exactly the same as those that brought foreign words into English in the first place, such as business, culture, medicine, sport, the arts, popular music, science and technology. The difference is that these expressions come from all over the English-speaking world, with American English the primary supplier, thanks chiefly to its presence in the media.

    The impact of media

    It is the media that provides the main answer to the question “How?”. In the old days, face-to-face contact caused expressions to be shared, and it would take time for words to travel – a generation before a word would become widely used. Today, the use of English in film, television, and especially the internet allows 'word travel' to take place at a faster rate than ever before.

    A new word or phrase invented today can be around the globe by tomorrow, and if it appeals it will spread on social media and become part of daily use in no time at all. Even an everyday phrase can receive a new lease of life in this way.

    Many countries try to resist the borrowing process, thinking that an uncontrolled influx of English expressions will destroy their language.

    The evidence from the history of English shows that this does not happen. Because of its global spread, English has borrowed more words than any other language – and has this caused its destruction? On the contrary, in terms of numbers of users, English is the most successful language the world has ever seen.

    Borrowing does change the character of a language, and this too is something that causes concern. But again, I ask: is this inevitably a bad thing? Shakespeare would have been unable to write his characters in such an effective way without all those borrowings from French and Latin.

    Much of his linguistic playfulness and creativity relies on how everyday words are contrasted with their scholarly or aristocratic counterparts. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Don Armado gives Costard a coin as a tip, calling it a "remuneration".

    Costard has no idea what the word means, but when he looks at his coin he realizes he’s been given a tiny amount. “Oh, that’s the Latin word for three farthings”, he reflects. “I will never buy and sell out of this word”. It always gets a laugh from an audience.

    Today's challenges

    Keeping up-to-date with language change is probably the greatest challenge facing foreign language learners because there is so much of it.

    Textbooks and teachers face a daily risk of falling behind the times. But the risk can be reduced if we build an awareness of change into the way we present a language. And understanding the natural processes that underlie linguistic change is the essential first step.