8 Dark English Idioms You Need to Know | Sound Fluent with These Morbid Phrases!

- So I asked my super Patreon Anna

what type of video she wanted me to do,

and she asked for dark, morbid idioms.

I know.

So, today, that's what we're doing.

So, Anna, you awesome human

with a dark sense of humor,

this one's for you.

(soft electronic music)

Right, there are and have been millions of idioms

in the English language,

and there are millions of books

about 500 idioms that you need to know.

I have good news for you, though.

We don't use 90% of them.

(glass shatters)

Ish.

Lots of them are old-fashioned,

and that's why we don't use them.

Some were never popular to begin with.

Some maybe people use in one little town,

in one tiny part of England.

But sure, if you can find 500 of them

to sell your shitty book,

why not confuse people?

When I teach idioms, I make sure

that you will actually hear them,

and actually want to use them in your day to day life,

so here we go.

- Now, you guys are slotted

for the 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. slot.

- What?

That's the graveyard shift.

- In your job, do you have different times

that you can work?

Like, sometimes, do you work in the morning,

sometimes, in the afternoon, sometimes, at night?

Those sets of hours are called shifts.

So, you work the morning shift,

the afternoon shift, the night shift.

The night shift can have a different name,

the night shift, the late shift,

or the graveyard shift.

(eerie orchestral music)

Now, why is it called the graveyard shift?

Do you have to work in a graveyard?

No, of course not.

It's called the graveyard shift because, a long time ago,

when lots of people were accidentally buried alive,

because, you know, medicine was bad, or something,

they often made mistakes.

Hey, so, we've been burying people alive,

like, all the time recently.

We need a plan.

(sighs)

Okay, Kevin, like, what do you want me to do?

I'm just saying I think we need a plan to stop this.

A plan, like what?

We're gonna bury them in the ground,

put a string to their wrist,

attach the string to a bell

so, if they wake up and realize

they've been buried alive by mistake,

they can ring the bell and someone can dig them...

Oh, that's a great idea.

I know, it's bullshit, right?

No, the actual reason for that expression comes

from sailors on a night watch.

They called it the graveyard shift because,

from the hours of midnight until 4:00 a.m.,

that was the time when the most disasters happened.

The graveyard shift, that's it.

- Tell him you love him.

Bite the bullet.

- Let's imagine that you have a relationship,

and, actually, you don't love that person anymore.

They love you lots, sure,

but you know that you have to end this relationship,

yet it's going to hurt this person a lot,

but you need to do it.

So (sighs)

Uh, what should I do?

It's been months now, and I still haven't said anything.

If you ask your friend what to do,

hopefully, your friend will say this.

I know it's hard, but just bite the bullet, do it.

Yes, it will be painful,

but it's better to do it now

and not wait anymore.

Bite the bullet and do it.

Bite the bullet is an expression which comes

from, again, a long time ago,

when medicine was rubbish,

and there was no anesthetic,

so, if you had surgery, there was nothing for your pain.

So what did they give people?

A bullet to bite.

Why would that help with pain?

I've never understood this.

You can practice this right now in the comments.

Have you ever needed to say this to someone?

Has someone ever said this to you?

What was the situation?

What did you need to bite the bullet and do?

Let me know.

- I have always taken you with a grain of salt.

- When you accept something,

but you're still like, I don't know,

you take it with a pinch of salt.

Now, another way to look at this is

to assume this is an exaggeration,

and probably the truth is less than that, right?

For example, if someone insults you,

and says you are the stupidest person ever,

someone might tell you,

whatever he says, take it with a grain of salt.

He's very angry.

In other words, he's exaggerating.

It's not that bad.

This expression comes from, again,

a really long time ago, the Romans.

Some Roman guy, he made an antidote to a poison,

and he was like, you've be pois-

You have been poisoned?

Okay, cool.

This will cure that.

Take this with a little bit of salt.

The Romans believed that adding that grain

of salt would protect them against poisoning.

I'm not sure if I believe that, I don't know.

- You think she set the fire and then just walked into it?

- Yeah, I've heard of cutting off your nose

to spite your face, but that's...

- Cutting off your whole face.

- You know you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.

- I'm going.

- When I was in high school,

our science teacher was so annoying,

and, okay, our class was really bad,

but, one day, she got so angry,

she was like this.

I am so annoyed with all of you.

That's it, all of you, one hour after school with me.

Have you ever had a teacher that has done that?

Did you notice that it's also a punishment for them,

because they also have to stay after school with you?

So, when someone is so angry with another person

that they do something to damage that person,

but they also damage themselves,

usually more, we say this.

They are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Uh, miss, aren't you cutting off your nose

to spite your face?

I mean, sure, you're punishing us,

but you're punished too by staying with us

for an hour after school.

To cut off your nose to spite your face?

What? Why?

Where did this come from?

So, the Middle Ages, think 12th century,

a common punishment for crime

was to cut off people's nose.

So, criminals thought, I'm going to cut off my own nose.

Yeah, that way, what are they gonna do to punish me?

(metal clangs)

Pretty smart.

- How do I look?

- Don't open that can of worms.

You are what you are.

(audience laughs)

- Can open, worms everywhere.

(audience laughs)

- To open a can of worms,

this expression is very similar

to the phrase opening Pandora's box.

Maybe you have something similar in your language.

But, to understand it, let's look at this situation.

Friends are hanging out.

Everyone's happy, but then,

someone says something that they should not say.

This statement causes chaos.

It causes huge drama,

and when that happens,

(grunts) he opened a can of worms

by talking about politics,

and now everyone's fighting.

It's chaos.

Has this ever happened to you?

Let me know in the comments.

What did you say?

What was the situation?

How did you open a can of worms?

How did you open Pandora's box?

Let me know.

This one is super fun to use.

When you go in a car,

and you want to sit next to the driver,

you just have to say this.

- Shotgun.

- Or.

- I call shotgun.

- And it's like a magic spell.

Everyone else has to let you sit in that seat.

I don't know why, that's just the rule.

Where did this expression come from?

Well, a long time ago,

in North America, in the old west,

(dramatic western music)

the people who rode these vehicles,

with the horses and everything,

the person who sat next to the driver

literally had to carry a shotgun

because, if someone wanted to rob them

(gun fires)

Mate, that's your job, you're in the shotgun seat.

- They bribe the guards, the guards turn a blind eye.

- A huge percentage of the planet's revenue

is derived from Tsunkatse.

Nobody wants to do anything

that might interfere with the game.

- So they turn a blind eye to the recruitment tactics.

- [Narrator] For years, the government turned a blind eye

to the recruitment of immigrants

by the meat-packing industry.

- In this case, I have just robbed a casino.

I took lots of cash from the room with the cash,

but then, the security guard catches me.

What, what do I do?

What do I do?

I know, I know, I offer the security guard money.

This is smart,

and very illegal.

Don't do it, I'm not advising you to do this.

This is terrible.

So, I tell him, hey.

Look, if I give you half of this,

you turn a blind eye.

To turn a blind eye, what does that mean?

Well, I did a bad thing.

He saw this, he knows that he should say something,

but he chooses to be blind to what happened.

He chooses to pretend not to see it.

What do you think?

Do you think he is going to turn a blind eye

to what I did?

So, to clarify, if he says,

yeah, I didn't see anything,

then he turned a blind eye.

Where does this phrase come from?

It comes from an old war,

where this guy told Nelson

to stop firing at ships.

My signals are telling you,

stop firing at the enemy ships.

But Nelson, he's only got one good eye.

The other one is blind.

So he's like this.

What, mate?

I don't know what you're saying.

Yeah, let me have a look, hang on.

Let me get my telescope.

Nah, can't see anything, mate, no signals.

Keep firing, keep firing.

So, yeah, basically,

Nelson should have listened to the orders,

but he chose to be blind.

- We got six minutes to deadline, Jonah.

We need page one.

- Parker.

- When you have some work,

an assignment, a report, homework, whatever,

and you need to give that work to your boss,

your teacher, your lecturer, whoever,

before a certain time,

that time is your deadline,

and you might say something like this,

I have to get this in before the deadline.

Here's a nice phrasal verb as well,

to get it in.

We could also say to hand something in,

to get something in.

It just means to submit your work when you're finished,

and you need to finish before the deadline.

And this expression, deadline,

comes from the Civil War in the U.S.A.

They had prisoner of war camps,

and, to stop people escaping,

they drew a line.

If you cross that line, people will shoot you,

making you dead.

It's the deadline, and you can't go past it.

Do you have any deadlines coming up?

What do you have to hand in?

What do you have to get in before the deadline?

So thank you to my super Patreon Anna

for requesting this lesson.

It was super fun to make,

and, if you want to request the next lesson,

you can do that by joining my Patreon.

The link is in the description,

or you can just click here.

You'll also get an e-book full of worksheets

for my favorite lessons.

And I'll see you in the next class.

(soft electronic music)