Learn the English Phrases "rock bottom" and "solid as a rock"

In this English lesson

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, rock bottom.

Now, when we talk about someone's life,

and if we say that they've hit rock bottom,

it's kind of a sad thing.

It usually means they're out of money

and maybe they've lost their job

and they don't know what to do next.

They don't have anything to use to buy food

and they don't know how to earn a living.

Sometimes we'll say that they've hit rock bottom.

Sometimes when we talk about someone whose life

has gone kind of off the rails, we would say

maybe they're doing drugs or something

that's just ruining their life

and at a certain point they might hit rock bottom.

That would be the point in their life

where they just aren't doing anything healthy anymore.

They've hit rock bottom.

This does have a bit of a positive meaning as well.

You can talk about prices when they hit rock bottom,

that's good for you at a store.

If you could say, this store has rock bottom prices,

that means you can buy things there really, really cheap.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase solid as a rock.

When something is solid as a rock

it's just that, it's immovable.

If I was to lift weights all summer

my muscles would get really big and they'd be very firm

and you could say, Bob is solid as a rock.

Maybe you are, let me see, maybe you're buying something

like a wheelbarrow for your garden

and the wheelbarrow is made out of metal.

You still might say, yep, this thing is solid as a rock.

That means it's well built

and it will last a very long time.

So to review, when someone hits rock bottom

it means they're at the worst part of their life,

not a nice time for them.

And when you say something is solid as a rock,

it means that it's built well or that it's just,

well here's an example,

this tree right here is solid as a rock.

It's a very solid tree, solid as a rock.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Abdula.

Now they changed how names work on YouTube,

so it gives me a very long name with numbers at the end.

So hopefully from this point on, I say names right.

Thanks Bob, it's really useful.

What is the meaning of off-white?

And my response, it means that something is white

but has a tiny shade of another color in it.

We often use the term off-white.

Thanks for the comment by the way, Abdula,

we often use the term off-white to talk about

paint in a house.

When Jen and I paint a room,

sometimes we'll paint it off white

and it'll have a little shade of blue in it,

a little tint of blue, or we'll paint something off-white

and it has a little bit of gray in it.

So it's very difficult to have pure white

in the flower world.

Sorry, I've switched subjects here slightly.

Jen and I grow a number of white flowers,

but most of them are off-white.

So when someone calls and says

can I have a bunch of white flowers?

We usually say we have some off-white, towards green.

We have some off-white with a tinge of pink in it

or a tinge or a shade of pink in it.

We have off-white that has just a little bit

of purple in it, so it's very difficult to find

pure white in the natural world.

I think almost everything is off-white to some degree.

Anyways, I'm just walking out here in the shade,

trying to get outta the wind again.

I feel like I'm always trying to get outta the wind.

It's a very nice day.

It's a Thursday right now.

I'm just wrapping up this lesson

and I'm going to be heading off to market.

Jen is already there with one of my kids selling flowers

and I had a few things to do at work

and I had a few things to do around here.

So I'm just finishing those and I'll be heading out

in just a moment to join her there and sell some flowers.

Anyways, I hope you're having a good day.

I'll see you in a couple days

with another short English lesson.

Bye.