Learn the English Phrases TO SHAKE IN YOUR BOOTS and TO GIVE SOMEONE THE BOOT

In this English lesson I wanted to help you

learn the English phrase, to shake in your boots.

If you say that someone is shaking in their boots

or if you are shaking in your boots,

it means that you are scared.

There are two things that make me shake in my boots.

The first is heights.

I don't like going up to the top of tall buildings.

I am afraid of heights.

I don't like going to the top of towers in big cities,

it makes me afraid.

It makes me shake in my boots a little bit.

I don't know where this phrase comes from though.

But I can imagine someone standing and they're so scared

that they're shaking and maybe they were wearing boots.

And someone started using this phrase

that when you're afraid you shake in your boots.

The other thing that makes me shake in my boots, snakes.

I do not like snakes.

They are my least favorite animal in the entire world.

Snakes make me shake in my boots.

They make me afraid.

I don't like them, I don't like them at all.

The next phrase I wanted to teach you is the phrase,

to give someone the boot.

Sometimes people don't do a good job at work

and eventually the boss will give them the boot.

That means that they are fired.

It means they've lost their job.

I know in my life,

a few people that I've worked with have gotten the boot.

Not from my current job, but from jobs when I was younger.

I worked with someone

who instead of doing the work we were supposed to do,

he would just sleep all the time.

And eventually that person got the boot, okay?

So notice I flipped the phrase there.

The boss would give someone the boot.

The person who is losing their job

we would say that they got the boot, okay?

There's no boot involved at all.

But if you give someone the boot,

I think it's like you're kicking them out the door.

That's probably where the phrase came from.

And if you got fired from somewhere,

maybe it's like you got kicked in the butt

and you lost your job,

so you got the boot.

So two different versions of the phrase.

Anyways, to review,

to shake in your boots

means to be scared or to be afraid.

And if you give someone the boot

it means that you are firing them,

that they are no longer working for you.

And if you get the boot,

it means that you have been fired by your boss

and you no longer work at the place where you worked.

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

This comment is from Alexei.

And Alexei says this, "I love your term, bite-sized lesson.

A bite-sized lesson that anyone can chew," thanks again.

And my response was, "It's a great phrase.

We often refer to smaller things

as bite-size or bite-sized."

You could probably use both terms, I think.

Yeah, we refer to a lot of things in English

as if they are food.

When you refer to smaller things

you can say that they're bite-size.

Maybe you have a few bite-sized tasks to do

before you go to work tomorrow,

maybe you have a few little chores to do.

We say things like food for thought.

We say things like, "Oh, I need to chew on that for a bit."

Alexei kind of mentioned that phrase here as well.

When you're thinking about something

you can say that you need to chew on it

before you make a decision.

So yeah, we use a lot of verbs and words referring to food

when we talk about other things.

English is a little bit of a weird language that way.

English is a language where we often talk

about things by using small images or stories.

You know, that's why we have so many idioms.

You know, don't put the cart before the horse.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

They're all like little mini stories,

they're bite-sized stories,

that kind of mean something in English

and it makes the language a little bit challenging to learn.

We say things like it's raining cats and dogs.

We actually don't say that one very often anymore.

But you could, if it was raining hard,

say it's raining cats and dogs.

So we use a lot of imagery.

We use a lot of phrases that kind of paint word pictures,

if you know what I mean, to talk about different things.

You know, "Superman" goes faster than a speeding bullet.

Those kinds of things are the things that we say

when we're speaking English.

It makes the language hard to learn.