Meaning of HIT THE BOOKS - A Really Short English Lesson with Subtitles

So, in English, when you hit the books

it means that you are studying.

You're not actually hitting your books,

although I think sometimes when students are studying

or when they are hitting the books,

they are tempted to actually hit the books

because they might be a little bit frustrated,

but when you say, in English,

that you are going to hit the books,

it means that you are going to study.

Often you will hear students use this

as a reason for not being able to do something fun.

So, a friend might say to them,

"Hey, do you wanna go out and see a movie tonight?"

and a student might respond by saying,

"No, sorry, I need to hit the books

"because I'm a little bit behind in my class

"and I need to get a lot of work done."

So, when you hear someone say

that they are going to hit the books,

they're not literally gonna go

and start smacking their books with their hands

or punching their books with their hands.

What they mean is that they are going to study.

So, hopefully you're hitting the books right now.

We have another phrase;

when students are hitting the books,

they might pull an all-nighter,

and I actually talked about this phrase

I think a few months ago already,

but I thought it was worth mentioning again.

When you pull an all-nighter,

it refers to staying up all night

to either study for something, or to hit the books,

or to stay up all night to get an assignment done

or a paper done or an essay done for school.

So, oftentimes, students in high school

or in university or college will pull an all-nighter.

They'll stay up all night to get something done

that they need to hand in the next day.