Idioms in English - "Hand"

I don't have a marker handy.

In English, "hand".

Everybody has one.

They're very useful.

I don't have a marker handy.

Today we're going to work on idioms with the word "hand".

What do they mean?

Why do we use them?

Handy.

Well, let's do idioms first, make sure we got that down.

Idioms with "hand".

Well, "handy" means or equals "available".

Now, that's the key, it's available now.

If you have something handy, you have it available now, or it also means useful, full of use.

If I tell you something is, that's rather handy, that cell phone that has all those

things in it, it's useful.

Or if I say, I don't have any money handy right now, I don't have anything I can get

my hands on.

Right?

And because I can't get my hands on it, it's not handy.

There's not a phone handy right now, I can't call anybody, or there's a marker that's

not handy.

I can't get my hands on it.

Okay?

So, "handy".

And why?

Well, let's look at why.

I think I explained before, these two are right here, but the hand, the human hand,

the, okay, actually let me change that, we use it a lot, oops, a lot, sorry, we use a

lot, it's, we say dexterous, but you don't need to know what that means, it's actually

right in Latin, but whatever.

We use it a lot, we use it to create, we use it to destroy things, okay?

So we use it a lot.

We use it for many different things, okay, and these are little things, build houses,

teach, do opera, conduct, okay?

So now we know what we use hands for, what the hand is, you know, it's on your body,

part of your body, let's look at something else.

We did "handy".

How about this?

"E" for Ezekiel.

You know I love Ezekiel, here he is right now.

Every one of my videos should have Ezekiel somewhere in it, okay?

Ezekiel, okay, let me just change this a little bit, had, had a hand in it.

What does that mean, Ezekiel had a hand in it?

Well, if you have a hand in it, it means to have a hand in something, okay, to be, whoops,

P, be part of doing something.

So when somebody has a hand in doing it, has or had, they were part of it, they were part

of doing it, okay, or they were part of the situation, that's to have a hand in it, okay?

Let's do another one.

Okay, Ezekiel went for a job, but he wanted a special job, he wanted to have experience

on the job, so he said, "I want hands-on experience."

Well, if somebody said Ezekiel wanted hands-on experience, it means he wanted to do it himself.

When you have hands-on experience or you are hands-on in a situation, you did it with your

own hands, okay, so you have direct experience, okay, direct experience, or you're doing it

yourself directly, okay, so that's hands-on.

So if someone's teaching you hands-on, they're there directly, they're not just telling someone

to help you.

Alright, so we've got that, we've got hands-on.

What about, okay, here's even better, you've got Ezekiel, there's my friend Ezekiel, okay,

let's get out of the way and say, if you don't want somebody to touch something of yours,

you tell them, "Hands-off."

Now, hands-off is two things, one means, "Don't touch," but if you're in business and you

say, "I have a hands-off approach," but that means I'm not directly involved, I let them

do their work, but I direct it from the outside, so not directly touching the work, I direct

it from the outside and I have a hands-off approach, okay, so one means, one mean, one

meaning is, "Don't touch."

If I'm touching your camera and you go, "Hands-off," I have to take my hand off immediately, don't

touch it.

The other one, if you have a hands-off approach, it means, number two, a not direct approach

to doing something.

So number one, you're touching your girlfriend's arm, she goes, "Hands-off," don't touch, remove.

Number two, your boss says, "I prefer a hands-off approach," it means that your boss, she would

prefer that people do their work and she's not there directly watching them.

So we've done hands-off, handed it, we've done hands-on, what else could we do?

We did handy, another one with hand, where someone's a handful, if someone's a handful,

it means they are difficult or they keep you really busy.

If you have a little kid, you know, "Wah, wah," a baby, blah, blah, blah, and it runs

away all day, see when Ezekiel was a baby, okay, his mother said he was quite a handful,

he would run all day long, talk all the time, she was always busy, because he made her life

difficult and he made her really busy, he is quite a handful, that job is quite a handful

or something's quite a handful means it makes, it keeps you busy or it's a difficult situation.

Let me see now, is there anything else I can think of with hands?

Actually I've been looking at the hands and the clock, I'm not going to get going, so

unfortunately I've got to get going, but before I go, we did idioms with hands, right, remember

hands are handy, they're useful, okay, we noticed that if someone makes your life too

difficult, right, they're a handful, if you like direct experience with something, you

want hands-on experience, if you don't want someone to touch it or you like to do things

a little bit away, a little distance from it, you say hands-off, do we do anything else?

No?

Got to go?

So www.engvid.com is where I want you to go if you want to learn about anything more,

or if you have any other questions, because I've got a lot of other expressions that are

kind of handy, but I just don't have the time right now.

So what did I say?

Go to www.engvid.com, as in English, vid, and it's video, but that's not going to tell

you where to go, is it?

No.

Why?

Go to www.engvid.com, where we'll teach you vocabulary, grammar, vocabulary, grammar,

I don't know, idioms, phrasal verbs, am I driving you crazy?

I'll see you there, okay?

Take care.