11 Advanced English Expressions from Real Conversation

I'm going to throw you a bone. Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall? I'm going to go to bat for you. Do you know these idioms? Have you heard them before? Do they confuse you a little bit? Well, don't worry because in today's lesson, I'm going to teach you 11 idioms that are perfect for actually being fluent in speaking English. In today's lesson, we'll focus on this short list of idioms that will actually help you become fluent in English. You'll hear them in conversations and you'll be able to use them masterfully by the end of today's lesson. Make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com to learn more about this lesson and speak with me in my community. Now let's get started with the lesson. When we think of the phrase to throw someone a bone, someone would throw me a bone for once. So this phrase you have to be careful how you use it because it could be a little bit insulting. It's casual. It's meant to be humorous. It's like throwing a dog a bone. Of course a bone is you know not great but like it's better than nothing so if you're giving someone a small opportunity a small reward or maybe you're just doing them a little bit of a favor you could say well I'll just throw you a bone this means it's not a lot but I'm giving you something or if you're asking someone to do something and you're implying that it's not that big you know it's just a little bit you should do just a little favor for me you could say couldn't you just throw me a bone it's like asking for help but you know that the help is just small. It's just a small favor. So maybe your boss says, well, I'll throw you a bone. Like you can be the leader on this project. Even though it's not a huge project, it's a good opportunity for you to show off your leadership skills and take charge. Now be extra careful with this next word because it can be offensive if used in the wrong way. And you'll understand why just by the definition. So to freeload, do you know what this means? if someone is freeloading it means they are taking money food or whatever it is from other people and they're not paying so oftentimes if we have a guest at our house and they're not paying rent and they're overstaying a little bit they've been staying for too long to say they are really freeloading off me you know they're just eating my food they're just staying at my house so you can see why this might be offensive if used in the wrong way sometimes we say well i don't want to freeload off you. This means like I don't want to take all your food. I don't want to stay at your house for too long. You're just trying to be polite here. So it's kind of a joking thing that we could say to our friends like oh I don't mean to be a freeloader like I'll give you some gas money. It just implies that you know you want to pay your share. You're kind of joking. You're obviously not a real freeloader. The noun here is a freeloader. A person who doesn't pay for food or a place to stay or whatever it might be. This next phrase is again kind of humorous. It's really good for sarcastic situations but it can also be used just very genuinely as well. If you say the phrase this never gets old it just means that I'll never get tired of doing this thing. It will never stop being funny. It's always enjoyable. This never gets old. So watching a sunset never gets old so that means you can watch a sunset every night and it's so beautiful that you will enjoy it every night it won't get old or tiring for kids sometimes when you do something fun with them like throw them up in the air and catch them or pretend to be a monster or something they just think it's so funny and they want you to do it again and again it never gets old to them meaning they enjoy it no matter how many times you do it now you can use the opposite of this phrase you can say oh this is getting old meaning this is getting annoying or it's not as enjoyable anymore so maybe your kid wants to listen to the same Cocomelon song 80 times in a row you could say oh this song really gets old or if you're being sarcastic you say well this song never gets old meaning it's starting to get annoying especially after 80 times so this next phrase I heard it in a conversation the other day and I wrote it down and I knew I had to teach it to you immediately So when we describe our relationship or a friendship with someone as a surface level relationship, we mean it's not really a deep emotional or personal relationship. Maybe we don't know the person that well. We wouldn't be comfortable, you know, asking them a lot about their feelings. We're very polite and friendly. But again, it's a surface level friendship because the opposite of a surface level friendship is a deep friendship, meaning very emotional. you know we've known each other for a long time we know a lot about one another so sometimes you know you might say yeah I don't really know anyone I work with that well we just have surface level relationships we're polite we talk about our weekends but that's about it and this doesn't have to be a negative thing it just means like you're not deeply talking about your emotions you're not considering anyone a close friend that has a surface level relationship with you A common phrase that I've been noticing English speakers say a lot is when they walk away with a certain type of feeling. Have you noticed English speakers saying this? This is basically just used when English speakers are telling a story and they want to tell you about the impression or the feelings that they had after meeting someone or after an event or after a big moment, whatever it is. I walked away with a feeling of inspiration. Just means, you know, this event gave me some inspiration or if you meet someone for the first time and it doesn't go very well you could say well I walked away with a really anxious feeling I don't think the meeting went very well so this just means this is the feeling that you had directly after the meeting you walked away with the feeling for some people that really like to shop all it takes is free shipping to seal the deal with them someone to seal the deal this means to seal the deal it means to finalize a decision or finalize a contract or an agreement so here if someone's just oh maybe i should buy this and the website says free shipping that seals the deal they're like all right i'll buy it it's free shipping obviously this is not a good habit to get into to buy something just because of free shipping but it's true for some people if you want to say just very normally at work like we finally reached an agreement you could say we finally sealed the deal this is just a fun way to say we had an agreement or if you want to say like whatever you're going to do is really going to make the deal good for someone they're really going to agree to it because you're giving them something really good you can say this is really going to seal the deal so it's kind of a fun phrase because it rhymes but it's serious it means you know you're going to finalize the deal you're going to make a good deal or agreement this next phrase is kind of interesting I don't use it a ton in my personal life it's kind of a phrase that older people use but I would say it's still pretty common and I want you to understand it so that you when you hear it you'll know what it means so when we say gangbusters yes I know it sounds ridiculous it means it's very successful it's energetic or it's popular she's coming on to me like gangbusters I heard it on a podcast recently they were talking about the Wicked movie premiere was gangbusters which means it was really popular it was you know really big and energetic or whatever or if you had a viral video for your business your business would go gangbusters means it becomes really popular or successful so this isn't used too frequently but it's good to know what it means because you could not guess this idiom just from hearing it and I had to look up where this idiom came from because it really doesn't make much sense it comes from the 1930s when police would bust up gangs in the United States it was full of energy and fast and powerful so that's why we say it was like you know the business is doing gangbusters or it was gangbusters it's just really energetic powerful fast so a really interesting phrase is to walk the line I walk the line so you would say I'm trying to walk the line between being funny and being offensive. So that means there's kind of a balance that if you're trying to be too funny you might become offensive and if you're too offensive you're not funny. Or maybe you're at an event and there's a game and you know maybe it's all your co-workers are there and you're trying to be competitive but you're also trying to be friendly so you're kind of walking the line between the two not to be too competitive or not to be too friendly where you're not actually trying to win. So you can think of an example of trying to walk the line between blank and blank. You could think of I'm trying to walk the line between working hard and enjoying my life. I love this next idiom. I use it all the time. The phrase is to be a fly on the wall. You know fly on the wall yourself. So we often say I would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation. So maybe you have an idiom like this in your language or maybe you can kind of guess what this means if you think of a fly on the wall no one would really notice the fly or you know be worried about the fly hearing the conversation so if you were just a fly on the wall you could observe the conversation or the situation without being noticed a lot of people imagine being a fly on the wall backstage at a event where celebrities are and you know wondering what they really talk about if they really talk like normal people or if you were a fly on the wall at your kid's school I always wonder what kind of things my kid does in school. Well, how does he act? Does he act normal Or is he silly or is he completely different than he is at home? I'd love to observe without my kid noticing me I would love to just be a fly on the wall this next idiom if you are supporting someone no matter the situation And you're willing to stick up and defend them. You can say I will go to bat for you I want to go to bat for Christina so oftentimes in the workplace if someone is going to do something and they're at risk of getting in trouble or causing you know some drama or whatever it might be they're not following the procedure their boss or their co-workers who are supporting their actions might say i'll go to bat for you this means i'll support you i'll stand up for you i'll say you know i told you you could do that or i support you doing that it means that even though this person might get in trouble they will still support them. In friendships, a friend that will go to bat for you will support you even if you're having hard times in life. They'll always support you, stand up for you. If people are talking bad about you, they'll defend you and and tell them that they're wrong. So this is kind of a baseball idiom. If someone was hurt and they couldn't go up to bat in baseball, they would have a teammate go to bat for them. A really interesting English phrase is one last hurrah. What? One last hurrah. This is really commonly used. It's used when something is about to end or change and someone's going to do something kind of for the last time. They say one last hurrah. A lot of times bands before they are going to retire they will play you know a concert as one last hurrah. They'll say this is our last show one last hurrah. It's kind of like a celebration of their time coming to an end. A lot of times if you're about to graduate and you want to have one more trip to celebrate your graduation before you go on to your next phase in life, you'll say, this trip is our last hurrah together. It's like our last time as a group of friends in school that we're going to be together. I'd love to know which phrases you found most interesting in today's lesson. It was really full of some new and exciting phrases that you can use in your everyday conversations. I hope that you like these. Let me know in the comments and make sure to visit me at englishwithkayla.com where I have more resources for you to learn English there. I'll see you guys in the next video. Check out one of them on screen. Thanks so much for watching. Goodbye!