Advanced American English Phrases and Idioms Native Speakers Use

Hey there, and welcome.

I'm Kate, and today I'm going to teach you advanced American phrases that will help you

to sound more fluent, more confident and understand native speakers better.

You can test yourself while watching this video and if you know all of these American

phrases, congratulations! you're an advanced English speaker.

And if you don't know some of these phrases, don't worry - this lesson will help you to

learn and memorize them.

At first, I'll give you a phrase in several contexts, and you'll try to understand it,

and then I will explain what it means.

Watch this video until the very end and find out how many of these advanced phrases you

know!

These words and phrases are really helpful because you can encounter them while watching

or reading English stuff, and it's amazing if you can use them in the conversation with

your friends, groupmates and teachers and it helps you become a better communicator.

So, let's get started.

The first phrase is Fall by the wayside

Let’s listen to the example and try to get the meaning

And she recognized that she loved dancing, and she let dancing fall by the wayside.

She'd gotten really busy at work, and so she said, "You know, I'm going to pick

up dancing again."

Another example: And I've been particularly fascinated with

how judgments change over time and how things that were

very popular fall by the wayside, but also how the opposite happens.

We can guess the meaning : the things were popular but they’re NOT popular anymore,

they just fall by the wayside If a person or plan falls by the wayside,

they stop before they complete what they set out to do.

To fall by the wayside means to give up or stop working.

If you don't have time to learn new vocabulary every day, you English falls by the wayside.

The next advanced phrase is cut to the chase

Listen to the examples:

Now let me cut to the chase 'cause I know my time is running short.

It’s pretty easy to understand, right?

Cut to the chase means to get to the point without wasting time, talk about what’s

really important.

If you’re very busy, and your friend is talking to you about something, giving you

so many details, and you think it doesn’t really matters,

you can say “Let’s cut to the chase.

I don’t have much time”

Let’s move on to the next one: Rock the boat

First of all, I want to know who is on our team, and I want to know who is going to rock

the boat.

First of all, I want to know who is on our team, and I want to know who is going to rock

the boat.

This phrase means to do or say something that changes a situation in a way that causes problems

Rock the boat means upset someone.

This phrase is often used in American English, when people want to express some kind of disagreement.

I'm not trying to rock the boat, I'm not trying to upset anyone, but I don't agree, I want

to say something opposite.

Phrase number four.

Run out of...

It’s a phrasal verb and Americans use it all the time.

The third risk for the world is running out of resources.

The meaning is obvious, right? to run out means to finish, so that there’s

nothing left.

If you run out of time, you have no time left.

вставка When you're running out of something, let’s

say, the food, that means that the food is completely finished.

The world is running out of food, and we’re not talking about it.

The next phrase is the one that I personally use extremely often

Leave no stone unturned …and the empowering stories of the women

who are leaving no stone unturned in their fight.

This phrase is an idiom, and it means to do everything you can, to achieve a good result,

try every possible course of action.

One of the things that we want to make sure of is, that we leave no stone unturned when

it comes to helping people get jobs.

Mister Obama says that they do everything possible to solve the problem, leave no stone

unturned to help people get jobs.

Let’s move on to the next phrase.

It’s very interesting.

Play by ear.

That means You don’t want to plan in advance, you just want to wait and see what happens

and then, make a decision.

And so we decided to play it by ear for a few days until we see how things developed

and we decided that we should go ahead with the virtual press conference.

And so we decided to play it by ear for a few days until we see how things developed

and we decided that we should go ahead with the virtual press conference.

So they don’t want to plan anything, they’re just going to see how things go, they want

to play it by ear.

Let's just play it by ear.

That means - Let's see how it goes and act according to the situation.

The next phrase is Hit close to home.

Hit close to home is to affect someone deeply

and emotionally.

It hit close to home means it reminded me about a personal situation in my life.

You can use this if something happens that makes you feel uncomfortable, because it's

about a very personal subject and it may be painful for you.

And you can say: Oh, that reminded me of a bad situation in my life.

It hit close to home.

Ok let’s move on.

Phrase number 8.

Take a stab at smth I came up with an idea, Rock Health, which

is what I'm doing now, to really inspire and find and support great entrepreneurs that

want to take a stab at fixing some problems in healthcare.

So, if you take a stab at something, you're going to try something, but you're not sure

if you're going to succeed.

For example, I’ve never tried sky jumping before but I wanna take a stab at it.

Number nine is a phrasal verb Pull yourself together

This phrase means: try to control your emotions after being very upset, angry or shocked.

If someone is crying, that you don't think that's sad, you might say: Pull yourself together.

The next phrase is used in American English pretty often.

Speak of the devil When you're talking to your friend about someone,

and that person you were talking about appears suddenly.

You might say: Speak of the devil!

We were just talking about you The phrase comes from England in the middle

ages when people were not allowed to talk about the Devil.

That’s it for today guys.

I hope this lesson was helpful.

Think of one new phrase from today’s lesson that you’re going to Use deliberately in

real life.

And if it turned out that you know all these advanced American phrases from today’s video,

that means you’re a real Advanced English speaker.

Thank you for watching guys!

Don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

See you next time.