Confused by modern idioms?

Question 1

spend a penny

Answer 1

(old-fashioned idiom) go to the toilet.

Can you wait a second? I have to spend a penny.
What! You’re going shopping now, are you? We’re just about to start the programme!
No, no, I have to… you know, ‘spend a penny’. Haven’t you heard that expression before? Spend a penny means ‘go to the toilet’. It’s an old idiom from the days when it cost a penny to unlock the door of a public toilet.

OK, I see. Well, you’re showing your age there, Sam – most young people today wouldn’t know what that phrase meant, and there aren’t many public toilets left nowadays anyway.

Question 2

thrown in the towel

Answer 2

(idiom) give in; surrender; stop doing something because you realise you cannot succeed

I’ll reveal the answer at the end of the programme, so just hold your horses for now! Ah, another idiom there, Rob - hold your horses meaning ‘stop and think for a moment’.

Many well-known idioms come from the world of sport, for example ‘throw in the towel’ which means ‘give up’, or ‘surrender’. But which sport does the idiom ‘throw in the towel’ come from?

Question 3

Groundhog Day

Answer 3

(idiom) a situation in which events that have happened before, happen again in exactly the same way.

So, Groundhog Day I think more or less has the meaning of ‘déjà vu’ now, and it’s completely embedded in the language… actually, that’s probably one of the first phrases that got me thinking about these modern idioms in the first place because it is so ubiquitous, it’s used in a huge range of contexts,

Question 4

ubiquitous

Answer 4

seeming to appear everywhere.

When phrases the movies develop into idioms it’s often because they are ubiquitous

So, Groundhog Day I think more or less has the meaning of ‘déjà vu’ now, and it’s completely embedded in the language… actually, that’s probably one of the first phrases that got me thinking about these modern idioms in the first place because it is so ubiquitous, it’s used in a huge range of contexts, and one of the things that made me sit up and take notice is, I had a number of students who know the phrase, Groundhog Day, but had no idea it was a film.

Question 5

break the internet

Answer 5

(idiom) cause so much excitement about something online that many people visit the website, making it crash.

The vocabulary of the internet, even the word ‘internet’, is relatively modern… the idea of breaking the internet is now a phrase I think people would use and recognise, so something that causes such a stir online that metaphorically so many people rush to a website that it threatens to bring it down, something like that…

Question 6

first-world problem

Answer 6

(idiom) a problem that does not seem very important when compared to the serious problems faced by people in poorer parts of the world.

Yeah, so the idea of something going viral is certainly very much in the vocabulary now… But things like Twitter have leant sort of phrases, so the idea of first-world problems, meaning sort of ironically things that we complain about but actually, compared to other parts of the world, may well be relatively minor, that started life as Twitter hashtag, for example.

Social media outlets like Twitter have also created their own idioms, including first-world problems - a trivial problem that does not seem very important when compared to the serious problems faced by people in poorer parts of the world.