13 IDIOMS for ILLNESS, SICKNESS & HEALTH | English Vocabulary Lesson (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

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- Hello everyone and welcome back to English With Lucy.

Today I am bringing you loads of idioms

related to sickness, illness and health,

so it's really going to help you

improve your English vocabulary

and it's going to help you sound more like a native.

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Right, let's get started with the lesson.

The first idiom is actually one used to say

you don't feel unwell, you feel very good,

it is to feel as fit as a fiddle

and a fiddle is another word for a violin,

so if you feel as fit as a fiddle, you feel great,

I, right now feel as fit as a fiddle.

Another one is to be a picture of health,

if you are a picture of health,

you are a great example of good health,

you could say, my friend was struggling with an illness,

but now she is a picture of health,

she is really, really healthy.

Now the next one is negative

and this is to have a splitting headache

and to have a splitting headache

is to have a really, really bad headache,

can you imagine it, to split your head?

Very painful, anyone who has suffered

with a migraine will understand that,

I've only had one in my life,

but it was a very, very bad couple of days.

The next one is one you have probably heard before,

because when I ask for examples of idioms from my students,

they always say this one or it's raining cats and dogs,

which is an idiom we don't use very frequently,

but the one I want to talk about

is to be, look or feel under the weather,

I normally use it with look, I might say,

ooh, you look a bit under the weather

and then the person could reply,

yes, I am feeling a bit under the weather

and this means to look, feel or be unwell,

it's quite a nice way of saying it,

because you don't want to say to someone, you look dreadful,

you want to say, you look a little bit under the weather,

are you unwell, are you feeling okay?

The next one is another negative one,

it is to take a turn for the worse,

if you take a turn for the worse,

it means you are iller or sicker than you were before,

so I could say, I had a cold,

but then I took a turn for the worse

and I had to go to hospital, so I was quite ill

and then I got really ill and I had to go to hospital,

you can use it in a positive way,

you can say, to take a turn for the better,

but it's not as common.

The next one is to be black and blue,

I wonder if you can guess

what this one might be, black and blue?

If you're black and blue,

it means that you have quite a few bruises,

so the marks you get after you've been hit,

so if you are very bruised, then you could say

that you are black and blue, this relates to the next one,

because the next one is to take a tumble,

if you have taken a tumble, it means you have fallen over,

so if you fall over and you get bruises,

you can say, ooh, I've taken a tumble

and I'm black and blue,

see if your English teacher understands you,

when you say that. (laughs)

The next one is to go under the knife,

this means to have an operation,

but it also can refer to cosmetic surgery,

so if somebody says, she's been under the knife,

it means she's had cosmetic surgery,

but if I said, I had a really sore leg,

but I went under the knife,

it means I had a sore leg, but now I've had an operation.

Now the next one is to be on one's last legs

and this means that somebody is very close to exhaustion,

to being very, very tired and collapsing or even death,

so if somebody says, I think they're on their last legs,

it means, I don't think they're going to live very long,

which is obviously very, very, very sad,

but in Britain especially,

we like to use a lot of idiomatic phrases

around very serious situations,

so instead of to die, we say to pop one's clogs,

you've popped your clogs,

it's just a way of dealing with something quite serious,

so if someone's on their last legs,

we're not trying to be funny, we're not joking,

we just, that's how we deal

with a really difficult, sad situation.

Another one that's quite similar

is to be hanging by a thread,

it means you're very close to either

the situation becoming very serious or even to death.

The last one is actually my favourite health-related idiom,

because it's so funny, (laughs)

I find it really funny,

it is to feel like, or to look like death warmed up,

again, this is an idiom, I would love to know

if you have an example of this one in your own language,

if somebody looks just dreadful, so ill, so unwell,

pale, grey, big bags under their eyes,

you can tell them they look like death warmed up,

it's just such a funny phrase,

you can't not smile, when somebody says that to you,

unless you're feeling like death warmed up of course.

So yeah, see if you can use that

in conversation with a native,

because I think they will really find that quite funny.

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