Language/English/Vocabulary/Useful-English-Idioms

Useful English Idioms

Hi English learners 😀

• What is an idiom? Idioms are phrases that usually feature a figurative meaning. We all use idioms in our essays to make them more beautiful.

Idioms will really make you sound like a native!

In this article, I will list some useful English idioms with their definitions and examples of how to use them.

Let's go! 😎✨

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Useful Idioms in English

Idioms	Meaning	Example sentence
A little bird told me	Someone told me, but I don't want to tell you who it was.
A penny saved is a penny earned	If you saved a penny, then you earned the penny. This idiom emphasizes us to save money.	As a saying goes, A penny saved is a penny earned, you should save the money for later use.
Birds of a feather flock together.	People who have the same tastes together.
Blessing in disguise	It is a bad situation but turns out give you an advantage.	My sickness turns out to be blessing in disguise as there is an accident in the school bus I'm supposed to take.
Crying over spilt milk	You cannot crying and pleaded for the milk to be back. This idiom means that what done cannot be undone.	There's no use crying over spilt milk as your project is already submitted and we can't fixed the error again.
How time flies	The time is gone. This idiom emphasizes us to use the time to do something useful.	How time flies, now it's one day before school reopen, and I haven't finish my homework!
I could eat a horse	I am very hungry.
Icing on the cake	Something good that occurs besides an other good thing.
It's raining cats and dogs.	It's raining a lot.
It's the straw that breaks the camel's back.	A small thing which causes one's failure or makes someone angry.
Like two peas in a pod.	Very similar, almost the same.
Once in a blue moon	It's to refer to impossibilities.
To be an egghead	To be very clever.
To be as cool as a cucumber	To be self-possessed.
To be dressed to kill	To be well-dressed.
To be in the soup.	To have trouble.
To beat about the bush	Not to say clearly what someone mean.
To catch somebody red-handed	To catch someone while they are doing prohibited things.
To cost an arm and a leg.	To be very expensive.
To flog a dead horse	To say something that is obvious or to speak about something that nobody is interested in.
To get cold feet	To be afraid of doing something. Timidity preventing an event.
To get something straight from the horse's mouth	To be sure that the person who told you a thing told you the truth.
To have a frog in one's throat.	To have a scratchy voice.
To have goose pimples	To be cold.
To have one's cake and eat it too.	Someone owns a thing and still tries to benefit from it.
To have other fish to fry	To have something else to do. To be busy.
To pull one's leg	To make fun of someone (trying to hurt someone).
To put one's foot in one's mouth	To say something troublesome.
To spend a penny (UK)	To go to the toilet.
To spill the beans	To reveal something confidential.
To work one's fingers to the bones	To work too much.
When pigs have wings.	It's useful to say that something will never occur.

Other Lessons

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• Altogether and all together
• Appear
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• How to use ON, AT and IN
• Also, as well and too
• Prepare IELTS
• Commonly Confused Words
• Tongue twisters
• Phrasal Verbs with OFF