Body idioms Flashcards
“to start a journey.”
head off
“I’m just heading off to the shops. Do you want anything?”
off the top of my head
It basically means “without checking.”
“That’s an interesting question, but I can’t tell you off the top of my head.”
Have your head in the clouds
You know this feeling.
When you’re walking down the street, daydreaming and thinking about what you might do if you won the lottery … you could travel the world and eat carrot cake whenever you wanted and maybe you could raise awareness for charity by swimming on each continent …
While you’re having these thoughts, you don’t notice the lamp post in front of you and then, all of a sudden … bang! You walk right into it!
head over heels
when we say someone’s head over heels (or that they’ve fallen head over heels for someone), it means they’ve fallen madly in love.
In over your head
This is when you’re stuck in a difficult situation — a situation that you don’t have the ability or the resources to escape.
In short, it’s very bad news.
Examples? Sure!
“It was only after he’d started to borrow money from the local mafia that he realised he was in over his head.”
No-brainer
Some decisions are difficult to make.
Like what to eat for dinner.
I find that a nightmare. Every. Single. Time.
But some decisions are really easy.
Like “Would you prefer to travel the world or work in a shoe factory for a week?”
Easy — travel the world, right?
Or “You have to choose a superpower: A lifetime of being able to fly or the ability to turn pages in a book without touching them.”
Easy! The book thing!
No, just kidding. It’s the flying. It’s always the flying.
These easy decisions?
They’re not usually called easy decisions but no-brainers.
So when someone asks you to choose between a thousand euros and a box of matches, all you need to say is, “That’s a no-brainer!”
pick your brain
Some people know more about stuff than other people.
For example, I’m pretty good at language stuff.
So, when a friend of mine has some tricky questions about language, they ask me.
On the other hand, I’m absolutely terrible when it comes to choosing a bike to buy.
I love bikes, but I know nothing about them.
That’s when I ask my friend Martin about types of bikes and which ones are best for off-road and which ones look best in Instagram photos and so on …
In short, I pick his brains.
But not in a zombie kind of way.
More of an “I want to learn about this particular topic” kind of way
out of your hair
Sometimes it’s just good to get out of people’s way, right?
If you’ve got young kids, this one will be familiar to you.
When you’ve got work to do, it’s good to have the kids out of the house (or at least out of wherever you’re working).
Maybe someone nice can take them out to the park and get them out of your hair.
And sometimes, we realise we’re kind of in other people’s way.
That’s a good time to say, “Sorry — I’ll get out of your hair in a minute. I just need to make some tea.”
let your hair down
Work, work, work, work.
Boring isn’t it?
Sometimes you just want to do something crazy, like bungee jumping, spending the evening at the fairground or maybe going clubbing.
It’s time to let your hair down!
We all deserve to let our hair down every now and again.
tear your hair out
You tear your hair out when you’re going a bit crazy from frustration.
It might just be because you’ve got a tight deadline, and you’re tearing your hair out trying to complete the work on time.
You might also be tearing your hair out trying to finish that last page of the novel you’ve been working on for three years.
You can also use the phrase “tear your hair out with worry”:
“I’d better get home before dark. Otherwise, my parents will be tearing their hair out with worry.”
split hairs
When you split hairs, you discuss tiny, tiny differences between things — differences so small that they don’t really matter.
Like when the bill comes to 12.84 and the waiter gives you change for 12.85.
If you complain about that, then you’re splitting hairs.
Or when you say it’s time to leave because it’s five o’clock, but then Barry tells you that it’s actually three minutes to five.
What’s Barry doing?
That’s right. He’s splitting hairs!
So that’s when you can say, “Don’t split hairs, Barry.”
raise eyebrows
Back in the past, it was much easier to shock people.
Things that are pretty normal these days would still raise a few eyebrows.
Perhaps a woman becoming CEO of a company would raise eyebrows.
Or wearing jeans and a T-shirt for a dinner party would raise eyebrows.
When something raises eyebrows, it slightly shocks people or catches their attention. It wouldn’t be anything too extreme — just enough to make people stop reading their newspaper and look up in surprise.
an eye for detail
So you want to become a journalist? Or a copy editor? Or an interior designer? Or a bomb disposal expert?
Then you’ll definitely need an eye for detail — you’ll need to be able to notice the small things.
eye on the ball
So you’re running a political campaign to become president of the world?
Well, good luck!
But there’s a lot of competition. You’ll need to be organised — very, very organised.
You’ll need to make sure you’re up-to-date with everything that’s happening. All the time.
You won’t be able to take a break or make a mistake. Not a single one. Not even a short break with coffee and no biscuits.
You’ll need to be focused every single second of the campaign.
In short, you’ll need to keep your eye on the ball.
Stay focused!
Eyes bigger than your stomach
When I was a kid, we went to Las Vegas and stayed in the second-biggest hotel in the world. (The biggest one was across the road — we could see it from our window.)
Las Vegas is a crazy place — the whole city seems to revolve around gambling. There are gambling machines everywhere.
Everyone wants you to spend your time (and money) in their hotels/restaurants/bars/diners, etc., so you’ll spend money on their machines.
As a result, the food was really, really cheap in our hotel.
We got lunch one day from an “all-you-can-eat” buffet — all you can eat for $3.50. Crazy cheap!
Of course, I put a small mountain of food on my tray, including a whole pineapple (until my mother placed it back on the buffet).
And of course, I didn’t eat everything — in fact, I only ate about a quarter of what I’d taken.
Why?
Because my eyes were bigger than my stomach.
Because I thought I could eat more than I really could.
