Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly use six common English idioms in natural conversation.

Lesson Explanation

An idiom is a phrase whose actual meaning is genuinely different from what its individual words literally suggest — it must be learned as a complete phrase, the same principle covered for phrasal verbs in Part 5, Lesson 4:

break the ice      — to ease tension in a new social situation
hit the books      — to study
piece of cake      — something very easy
under the weather  — feeling slightly ill
cost an arm and a leg — very expensive
on the same page   — in agreement

A genuinely useful signal that a phrase is an idiom: it doesn’t make literal sense in context. If someone says they’re under the weather, they aren’t describing actual weather — that mismatch is the clue that this is a fixed idiomatic phrase.

Practice Questions