Colour Idioms in English

Credits: ESL Teachers

1. Red tape: official or bureaucratic tasks.

2. Green with envy: to be very jealous, envious.

3. Gray area: something that is unclear, undefined.

4. Black and blue: describe something that is badly bruised.

5. Golden opportunity: the perfect chance.

6. Have the blues: be sad or depressed.

7. Black sheep: a person who is a disgrace to a family or group.

8. Out of the blue: randomly, without warning, surprisingly.

9. White lie: a small lie that is told to be polite or avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

10. Yellow-bellied: a coward.

11. Caught red-handed: to catch someone in the act of doing something.

12. To be yellow: to be cowardly.

13. To see red: to be very angry.

14. Green thumb: to be skilled at gardening.

15. Once in a blue moon: very rarely.

16. Take the red eye: a late night flight that arrives early in the morning.

17. Tickled pink: to be extremely pleased.

18. Pink slip: a notice of dismissal from employment.

19. White elephan: an expensive item that is costly to maintain.

20. Silver screen: the film industry.

21. Blue collar: working in a manual labour job.

22. Black as night: somewhere very dark, when it is hard to see anything.

23. Black eye: a bruise near one’s eye.

24. Black out: faint.

25. Beet red: dark red.

26. Black and white: straight forward, very clear.

27. The green light: permission.

28. In the red: in debt.

29. Roll out the red carpet: treat someone like royalty.

Halloween 2018 Class Activities

Can you match these frightful, spooky idioms with their meaning?

1. I don’t recommend that horror film. It will scare the living daylights out of you!

2. My old car finally gave up the ghost, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

3. When she saw the dark shadow in the in the moonlight, she was scared stiff.

4. What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!

5. Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Nothing bad is going to happen.

6. That spooky old house gives me the creeps.

7. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It will come back to haunt you.

8. No one lived there anymore. It was a ghost town.

MEANINGS:

be a mistake
very frightened
coward
make (someone) uncomfortable
make (someone) scared
very white, pale
deserted
stopped working 

Expressions with Food

Credits: BBC Learning English

Some Idioms for Mother's Day

Halloween 2017 Class Activities

Can you match these frightful, spooky idioms with their meaning?

1. I don’t recommend that horror film. It will scare the living daylights out of you!

2. My old car finally gave up the ghost, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

3. When she saw the dark shadow in the in the moonlight, she was scared stiff.

4. What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!

5. Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Nothing bad is going to happen.

6. That spooky old house gives me the creeps.

7. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It will come back to haunt you.

8. No one lived there anymore. It was a ghost town.

MEANINGS:
be a mistake
very frightened
coward
make (someone) uncomfortable
make (someone) scared
very white, pale
deserted
stopped working 

IDIOMS ABOUT FEAR

If you want to get the full text by BBC Learning English, you can click here.

Some more English Idioms

Idioms related to trees

Image credits: American English at State on FB

Idioms related to money

Image credits: American English at State on FB

Spring Idioms Activity

Activity credits: Macmillan English

Spring Idioms Infographic

Infographic credits: Macmillan English

Halloween Class Activity - Idioms

Can you match these frightful, spooky idioms with their meaning?

1. I don’t recommend that horror film. It will scare the living daylights out of you!

2. My old car finally gave up the ghost, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

3. When she saw the dark shadow in the in the moonlight, she was scared stiff.

4. What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!

5. Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. Nothing bad is going to happen.

6. That spooky old house gives me the creeps.

7. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It will come back to haunt you.

8. No one lived there anymore. It was a ghost town.

MEANINGS:

be a mistake
very frightened
coward
make (someone) uncomfortable
make (someone) scared
very white, pale
deserted
stopped working 

A "bad egg"

cartoon credit: Adams from The Telegraph

In a nod to Easter, this cartoon by Adams from The Telegraph portrays North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a boiled egg. The title of the cartoon "Bad Egg" is a play on words since a bad egg is someone who behaves in a bad or dishonest way.
US military drills in South Korea have prompted a fresh round of threats from North Korea in the past week, with leader Kim Jong-un ordering that the military be on standby to hit the US mainland with missiles. The isolated communist state stepped up its pugnacious rhetoric still further yesterday by warning Seoul that the Korean Peninsula was entering "a state of war". 

Source: The English Blog

Valentine's follow-up activity

What about exploring a fun infographic for Valentine’s Day from ESLlibrary.com. You can use it to explain a few “love idioms” to your students. Click here for a full-size PDF version of the graphic! Bear in mind that you can still visit our FB page (Saint Valentine's @ Pine Tree) if your aim is ELT/social networking in a realia context.

infographic credits: ESL library

English as a second language online

Using English is an important resource online with a large collection of English as a Second Language (ESL) tools & resources for students, teachers, learners and academics, covering the full spectrum of ESL, EFL, ESOL, and EAP subject areas. You can find tests and quizzes, handouts, printables, scientific articles, blogs and an interesting teachers forum. There's also a section that we found particularly interesting on English  idioms and idiomatic expressions. Give it a try!

Halloween: idioms of fear

If you want to get the full text by BBC Learning English, you can click here.

Geography & Weather Idioms

image credits: 9teen87's Postcards @ FlickR

We have already blogged about idioms. If you still remember, "an idiom is a combination of words that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves". 

Today we are going to focus on Geography/Weather topics, which are almost an obsession for British people, especially the latter. But is there any special reason for that? To tell the truth, we don't know but the fact is that the weather is extremely unpredictable and wet in the British Isles, that's why 70% of the British check the weather forecast at least once a day and use the idiom "It's raining cats and dogs" so often!

Idiom	Meaning	Example
(on) cloud nine	extremely happy	Andrea was on cloud nine when she bought her new car.
dig deep	look hard for information	I had to dig deep to find my old report cards.
dirt cheap	very inexpensive	The clothes at the thrift shop are dirt cheap.
down to earth	natural or real (personality)	Lucile is really down to earth for a woman with so much money.
fair-weather friend	a person who is only a friend in good times	I can't talk to Nancy about my boyfriend problems. She's only a fair-weather friend.
a field day	a very enjoyable time	The kids had a field day at the water slide park.
go downhill	get progressively worse	My grades started going downhill when I got a part-time job.
go with the flow	continue in the same way as others	Nobody trained me at work. I just went with the flow.
hit the hay	go to sleep	I'm exhausted. I think I'll hit the hay early tonight.
hit the road	leave	It's getting late. We had better hit the road.
keep one's head above water	have just enough money to live	It's hard to keep my head above water with all of these medical bills.
know which way the wind blows	know how things will turn out	Who knows which way the wind will blow? I just hope Jesse gets one of the jobs he's applied for.
make a mountain out of a molehill	make a small problem seem big	The car only got a tiny dent. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.
out of the woods	clear of danger	The doctor said my heart is doing better, but I'm not out of the woods yet.
over the hill	past middle age	I knew I was over the hill when I started needing glasses to read.
rain on someone else's parade	ruin somebody else's happiness	Whenever I had a dance recital, my older brother always rained on my parade.
stick-in-the-mud	a loner or person who won't join in	They didn't bother inviting Charles to the party because he's alway a stick-in-the-mud.
(as) quick as lightning	very fast	Wow! Your shower was as quick as lightning.
the tip of the iceberg	a small part of a large problem	The lost tickets were just the tip of the iceberg.
take a raincheck	accept at a later date	I'd love to go out for dinner, but can I take a raincheck?
under the weather	ill	I was feeling under the weather so I went back to bed.
up the creek	in trouble	If my Dad finds out I had a party I'll be up the creek.
win by a landslide	win by a lot of points	The skiier in the green coat won by a landslide.
(get) wind of something	overhear something about someone or something (often gossip)	My Dad has a new girlfriend. I got wind of it over dinner tonight.

The Idiom Connection

This website focuses on how idioms work. According to the author "an idiom is a combination of words that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves". It has an A-Z list of idioms and quizzes to test your knowledge. It's desirable to know by heart at least the "100 Most Frequently Used English Idioms" ;) Time to hit the books and kill to birds and show the world that English is your cup of tea!

Saved by a comma

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net