Meaning of AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE - A Really Short English Lesson with Subtitles

So in English if you say you are going to avoid it like the plague it means that whatever

it is that you are talking about you are going to stay really far away from it.

The plague is a really, really bad disease that happened hundreds of years ago and it's

something that back then you would have wanted to have avoided.

You would have wanted to stay far away from it, so, these days sometimes people will refer

to things in the same way.

They'll say, "You know, there's a store downtown.

I would avoid it like the plague because they are always trying to give you the wrong change

when you pay for your stuff."

Or they might say there is a restaurant on the other side of town, if I were you I would

avoid it like the plague because the last time I ate there I got a little bit sick.

So if you say avoid it like the plague it means stay far away from it.

We have another phrase in English as well, "keep your distance", so sometimes there will

be someone you know who is sick, maybe they have a cold or they have the flu and you will

want to keep your distance from them because you don't want to get sick as well.

So you would definitely keep your distance from someone who is sick.

And it's a little different than "avoid it like the plague".

We wouldn't say that you would avoid someone like the plague, but you definitely might

keep your distance from a person, especially if they are sick and you don't want to be.