Do NOT Say “It’s Hard”!! | ADVANCED English Lesson

Oh my gosh, Marina. I woke up so  early today, it was hard.  

And then a really hard workout on my Peloton,  and then a busy day, it was hard!

Oh, wow Rachel it does sound hard. You know  what else is hard? Expanding your vocabulary.

True. But today we’re going to do just  that. Marina and I are going to give you  

21 expressions to use instead of,  or in addition to, “it’s hard”.

One thing you can say if something is really  hard is “it’s killing me.” You can use this  

for something that is either physically hard  or emotionally hard. For example, let’s say you  

applied to a bunch of colleges and you’re waiting  to hear where you were accepted. You could say,  

The wait is killing me. Or, let’s say you’re in  healthcare and your hospital is short-staffed.  

That means there aren’t enough workers.  So you’ve had to pick up some overnight  

shifts. That’s very hard physically. You  could say, this schedule is killing me.

This job is killing me man.

Let’s have Marina bring you number two.  She’s from the Linguamarina channel.  

She lives in the US, but was born abroad, and, as  a person who learned English as a second language,  

she knows exactly what challenges you’re  facing on your English learning journey.  

She makes videos about how to speak English  fast and understand native speakers, vocabulary,  

and life hacks on how to make the process of  learning English fun. Check out her channel and  

be sure to subscribe with notifications to both  her channel and my channel if you haven’t already.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. That  means it was a very hard thing to do and it  

required a lot of effort. It took Jack a lot of  blood, sweat and tears to talk his three-year  

old daughter into going into a dentist, oh this is  the story of my life, my two-year old daughter  

hates going to the doctors and it takes me blood,  sweat and tears every time we have an appointment.  

So basically it takes us a lot of time and  effort to take her there to explain what  

would be going on and also think of a treat  that she’s going to get after the appointment.

I put my blood, sweat and tears into my coaching

A hiccup, bump in the road, a hurdle to jump.  I’m grouping three together here because they  

all came up in a conversation with a friend. It’s  funny how, when you use one idiom, it’s sometimes  

hard to give the literal meaning. I’ve found we  often explain idioms with other idioms.

There was a minor hiccup with um, a situation with a badge where I was not allowed access?

What do you mean by hiccup?

Um, there was a situation which was not ideal, it was a bump in the road.

Bump in the road, now that’s also an idiom. Could you explain that?

It was really what I would call a hurdle that I had that

A hurdle!

There was a hiccup. Something didn’t go smoothly;  

something wasn’t easily done. She was traveling  for work, and she was expecting to have the  

access she needed to get into the building. But  it wasn’t that easy, she had to take extra steps.  

A hiccup is something minor. It doesn’t make  life really hard, just a little inconvenient.

A bump in the road is just like a hiccup, it’s  a minor inconvenience. It’s not a huge deal,  

it just makes things a little harder  to move forward in a situation.

So that’s it? You get one little  bump in the road and you give up?

She did eventually get the access  she needed to the building,  

she just had to do a few extra  things to get that access.

The reason we’re all laughing is because she keeps  explaining an idiom with another idiom. None of  

these are the literal meaning, they are all the  idiomatic meaning. No one, actually  

had the hiccups, she was not literally traveling  on a road with bumps, and there were no literal  

hurdles to jump over, like you would in a track  race or something. These are all phrases to say  

you had to do more work to make something  happen, it was not as easy as you were expecting,  

the situation, the task, was a little  bit harder than you thought it would be.

For example, our plane was delayed, so there was  a little hiccup, but overall the trip was fine.

There was a bump in the road with my launch  

because the video editor got sick,  but eventually everything got done.

There were some hurdles to jump  with our mortgage application  

they kept wanting more information  but in the end we were approved.

It was a hard-won. That means that you achieved  something after a lot of effort. It was a  

hard-won journey moving from Russia to the US  at the age of 25. That’s the story of my life.

It’s been a slog. A slog is hard work  or tiring work over a period of time.

For example, if you’re telling a  friend about your job, you could say:  

We just got a lot of new clients, which  is great, but it has sort of been a slog.

It's been a tough slog in many areas.

It’s a bumpy road. We use this  expression to replace it’s hard  

when we talk about our journey to something. For  example, “I built a company in the United States  

and it was a bumpy road.” Which means I finally  accomplished my goal but there were a lot of  

obstacles on the way. I had to get my green card,  I had to set up a company, I had to find a CPA,  

I had to find a banker, I had to find clients but  in the end, I got there but it was a bumpy road.  

You see it’s good to know an alternative to a  widely used word because every alternative gives  

you this different mood like I could have said it  was hard to build a company in the United States  

but hard is discouraging. When I say it was a  bumpy road, I mean that you know, I did it yes,  

I had some obstacles but here I am. So, it  doesn’t have this additional weight of being  

something that was really hard and challenging.  It was a bumpy road so slightly lighter.

It’s a very bumpy road, people are couch  surfing, people are trying to figure it out.

It’s slow-going. If something is  slow-going, progress is difficult,  

hard, it’s not easy. Getting a task  done is taking longer than projected,  

probably because there have been some  hiccups or bumps in the road. For example,  

“Finishing my novel has been very slow-going–I’m  just having a really hard time focusing.”

But it is hard work and it’s slow going and  you need to really work through the unforeseen  

consequences of each element  that you put in place.

Another great phrase that you can use in order to  impress native speakers when you speak English,  

"There were some curveballs." And even if you do  not intend to use these phrases, it is good to  

know what they mean because sometimes I speak to  Americans, they use some phrase and I can’t really  

say what it means just by hearing the phrase,  so over the time I learned that I have to know a  

lot of idioms, I have to know a lot of synonyms  because people actually use them all the time.  

And I don’t want to be this person who’s like you  didn’t get something, you sit there like yes yeah,  

that was me when I first came to the US like  I didn’t get a phrase I’d be “Ahuh, great.”  

Now, it’s kind of easier but it’s a bumpy road  to get here. Let’s go back to this phrase,  

“There were some curveballs”. A curveball is  something unexpected, something comes up and you  

have to deal with it. For example, I can say I have  a wonderful time living in California but there  

are some curveballs all the time. I don’t know,  something happens, you have to pay a lot of taxes  

of you have to move to a new place, you just  had two kids or you’re raising a venture round  

as a creator but you have to deal with  legal procedures, investors, etcetera.

But life throws you curveball bro!

It wasn’t straightforward. If  something is straightforward,  

it’s uncomplicated and easy to do or understand.  So if it isn’t straightforward, it is complicated,  

it’s not easy to do or understand. For  example, when I lived in New York city,  

I got invited to a wedding in Harrisonburg,  Virgina and I thought, “Great,  

I'll take a train. Well, it turns out it's not that straightforward. There's no

train directly there. There’s not  even a good train option with a transfer, you  

could take a train to DC and then you could maybe  take a bus over to the Harrisonburg area and then  

maybe take a cab to the wedding itself and I was  like, “Whoa, I thought this was going to be easy  

but it’s actually not straightforward at all. So  you know what I did? I ended up renting a car.

It was rough or it's rough going. Now, this  phrase is kind of it has a slightly negative mood  

like how is your business doing? It was  rough. When you say it’s rough, the you  

actually imply that you have problems there,  sometimes serious problems. Like if you ask me  

how was my travel related business impacted  by Covid, I would say it was rough.

This whole year has been pretty  rough going down at the mine.

Numbers 13 and 14 both begin with ‘put  through’ – they put me through the wringer,  

they put me through my paces. A wringer is a  device used in doing laundry by hand to get excess  

water out of the clothes or linens you’re washing.  You crank the fabric through and it wrings out the  

water. Ouch! I do NOT want to be put through a  wringer! But we use this idiom to mean several  

difficult or unpleasant experiences. Let’s say  you’re a graphic designer and you’ve applied for  

a job at a big company. You send in your cover  letter and resume, then they interview you.  

But then they ask for more examples of your  portfolio that you have to pull together. Then  

they ask you to interview with two more people.  Then they ask you to work on a sample project. You  

get the job and you think, I’m so glad they hired  me but they really put me through the wringer!

Put me though my paces has the exact same  meaning: To make one undergo a thorough  

testing or examination to evaluate one's  worth, ability, or competence. For example, 

"I did get the job, but they put me through  my paces in the application process."

Kate’s been through the wringer so if it’s not going to make her any worse.

Another phrase that you can use is “no picnic”.  No picnic means something is difficult to do  

something is not pleasant. Again, taking  a child to a doctor is “no picnic”.  

Which means it’s harder and less pleasant than  having a picnic in the park with your kid.

Also picnics are no picnic.

The next two have to do with being hard to  figure out. So it’s not hard to do something,  

like most of these phrases that we’re listing  here, but it’s hard to solve the problem.  

I’m stumped and I’m baffled. This is like  I’ve tried everything I can think of,  

I now have no idea what to do to  solve this problem. For example,  

I have this apple peeler, corer, slicer that  comes in so handy when I’m making apple pies,  

but it stopped working and I looked and looked  and could not figure out what was wrong. I was  

completely stumped, so I asked my brother-in-law  to help me figure out how to fix it. For a while,  

he was also baffled, but then we got it working.  Just in time for those thanksgiving pies.

Great power has always baffled primitive man.

Uphill climb or an uphill battle. This means  

that something is difficult to do and  requires a lot of effort and determination.

The process of moving to another country is  always an uphill battle because you have to  

deal with the documents, you have to find  a place to live but at the end of the day  

it’s also super exciting because  you’re building a new life.

And it does mean that there are  going to be some that aren’t successful

and it’s going to be an uphill climb for some.

Uphill both ways. Now, this is a funny  phrase that you can hear from older people,  

so basically think of a hill. And when you walk  uphill the it means you actually go down and it’s  

easier to go down so when you walk uphill, you  expect that things will get easier when you go  

down. Now, when you say “I walk uphill both ways”,  that means instead of going down, he actually  

climbed on another side as well. You know I can  say it was so hard to get a full-ride scholarship  

in an American University, I had to write an  essay, I had to do this and that and somebody from  

the 80’s might answer “I went uphill both ways  to get into a university in the US because now  

you have internet, now you have Youtube with free  resources on how to get a full ride scholarship  

and I didn’t have it so basically this phrase is  used to show that we’re a generation with a lot  

of opportunities and it’s easier for us to reach  goals that were hard to reach back in the day.

It’s a bear. A bear. Big, hard to control, a  little scary. Something that’s a bear is tough  

to deal with, hard to do. A couple of years ago we  moved from our ‘starter’ home to our dream home.  

Even though we hired a company to help with  the process, the move was still a bear.

You could also say “it’s murder” when  something is extremely unpleasant to deal with.

It’s murder finding parking in San Francisco  Financial District. Oh, believe me. I used to  

live there, it’s murder. Like you won’t imagine,  I don’t know where you’re watching this from  

but it costs around $15 to park your car  for 15 minutes downtown San Francisco.

“Hell” and “I went to hell and back” to do  it. Hell in various religions is the realm  

of evil and suffering. You do not want to be  there. If something is hell, then it’s very hard.  

For example, "She had a very difficult recovery  from the accident, it was just hell."

Yes, every minute of it was hell.

A variation on this phrase is "went to hell  and back to do it”. If you went to hell and  

back to achieve something, you put in an  incredible amount of hard work to do it.  

For example: Well, I went to hell  and back but I finished my thesis.

Easier said than done, you can use  this phrase when something sounds easy  

but it would actually be hard  to bring something to life.

Finding a perfect house was easier said  

than done. It took us two months  to find our house in California.

Yeah, but that’s easier said than done.

You have to do it; you have no choice.

Ok Marina, I think we did it! Thank  you for helping me, this was great!

Thank you guys for watching this video,  don’t forget to subscribe to my channel

Bye Marina. Don’t forget to subscribe with  notifications to Linguamarina here on YouTube,  

and of course do check out the video that we made  on Marina’s channel which will come out March 9 to  

find 15 more phrases we can use instead  of ‘it’s hard’. I’m also releasing a bonus  

video to my membership this week of 7 more phrases  – can you believe how many ways there are to say  

something is hard? Pick a couple of these phrases  that you’ve never used before that you saw in this  

video and think about situations in  your life where you might use them.  

What’s been a slog for you? What problem has left  you stumped? Get comfortable with these phrases  

and start using them in your everyday English  to express yourself with more sophistication.  

Keep your learning going now with this  video and don’t forget to subscribe  

with notifications so you never miss  a lesson. I love being your English  

teacher and accent trainer. That’s it, and  thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.