7 British English Food Idioms | Real English Vocabulary

Only joking Eat Sleep Dreamers!

I know why you are here but maybe you don't know why you are in here.

Let me explain.

I put you in the fridge because I thought well where better else to teach you seven

British English idioms related to food.

Right, our first idiom is to do with milk.

There's no use crying over spilt milk or It is no use crying over spilt milk.

Now this means that don't get upset about a negative thing that happened in the past.

Ok, let's think of an example.

So you are at work and you send an email to the wrong person and this causes a problem

of some kind.

And you are there at work and you say 'why did I send that email?

I'm such an idiot.

I wish I hadn't sent that email.'

and your colleague says to you look 'There's no use crying over spilt milk.'

And there are just saying to you don't get upset about it, it's happened, it's in the

past.

You can't do anything about it.

So there's no use crying over spilt milk.

That's pretty good, I like that one.

Idiom number two is related to baked beans.

The most delicious food in Britain.

Now the idiom we have with beans is to spill the beans.

And this means to tell someone a secret or to tell someone something confidential.

For example maybe you are at home with your flatmate an she's been on a date and you want

to know the information, all the secrets and you say to her 'come on tell me what happened

on your date'.

She goes 'No, I'm not telling you' and you say 'come on spill the beans' and that means

come on tell me all the secrets, tell me all the fun little things, the confidential things.

So the idiom is to spill the beans.

Ok, number three a piece of cake.

Technically this isn't cake but it'll do.

So if something is a piece of cake we think of it as being very easy to do alright so

maybe an exam.

You do an exam and at the end you come out and you go 'that was a piece of cake' and

that means that was really easy.

It could be anything, a driving test, an exam anything learning English.

'Learning English is a piece of cake' maybe, I don't know.

Anyway!

Number four to be the apple of someone's eye.

Is to be the most loved and precious thing in their mind.

So for example my grandmother I was the apple of my grandmother's eye, she thought I was

the most wonderful precious thing.

In turn I have a niece and nephew and they are the apple of my eye.

I think they are the most wonderful little things in the world.

So to be the apple of someone's eye is a very special thing.

Maybe your partner is the apple of your eye, I don't know.

To be honest sometimes it's not necessarily people, it could be things so a motorbike,

your motorbike could be the apple of your eye.

Alright staying on the fruit idiom idea, bananas.

Now if you describe someone as being bananas then you are describing them as being crazy,

so you have to be careful.

We also use the phrase to go bananas and this means to go crazy, to go wild.

It can be used positively or negatively so in a negative sense you might say 'When he

heard the bad news he went bananas.'

And that could mean he went crazy, angry wild those kinds of things.

In a positive sense maybe 'When the team scored, they all went bananas.'

So they all went crazy but in a good way.

So it can be positive or negative depending on the situation.

I'm resisting the temptation to pretend that this is a phone.

I'm going to do it.

'Hello.

Yeah, it's great to hear you.

It's been so long.

Why didn't you call?

You knew I was here.

It's so good to hear your voice.'

This is a good one, we've got butter.

Now the idiom is to butter somebody up.

Now this means to overly praise or to please somebody because you want them to do something

for you.

So for example, let's say you want to get a pay rise from your boss, that means you

might want to praise them and do extra things for them just so you can get the pay rise.

So 'I'm going to butter up my boss to get a pay rise'.

It's very informal, so again be careful.

Don't use it, in formal situations.

Ok, the final one is to do with sardines.

They are very small little fish.

I mean there are about five sardines in here, do they have much space?

No, not a lot of space.

So when you are on the train going to work, do you have much space?

Probably not, I've been on a few trains in London, Hong Kong, in Buenos Aires.

There's not a lot of space.

So you can say that you are packed in like sardines and that just means you haven't got

a lot of space to move.

Eat Sleep Dreamers you must be freezing come out of there.

Thank you so much for watching this video.

If you have enjoyed this video about British English idioms let me know in the comments

below and give it a thumbs up.

Thank you so much, this is Tom the English Hipster and you guys know what time it is,

it's time to take your English to the next level!